Info Edge (India) Limited (NAUKRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Vineet, currently we have 100-plus participants on the call. Over to you to get us starting.

Thank you, Anand. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Info Edge India Limited Quarter 4 FY '25 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today from the management, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman; Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter and Managing Director; Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Director and CFO. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention towards the detailed disclaimer included in the presentation for good order's sake. Kindly note that this conference call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. Now I'll hand over to the call to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.

Thank you, Vineet, and very good evening, everyone, and welcome to Info Edge's Earnings Call for the Fourth quarter of FY '25. We will start with an update on stand-alone financial performance, then cover segment-wise performance, along with the commentary on each business. And then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A. For the stand-alone business in Q4 of FY '25, billings were INR 984 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 19% and revenue was INR 687 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 13%. Billings and revenue, including Zwayam and DoSelect were INR 1,015 crores and INR 718 crores, respectively, a Y-o-Y growth of 19% and 13%. Operating profit at a stand-alone level grew by 3% Y-o-Y to INR 231 crores and the operating margin stood at 34%. The stand-alone business generated cash from operations of INR 536 crores in Q4 of FY '25, a Y-o-Y growth of 15%. In Q4 of FY '25, the cash generation from the recruitment business was INR 532 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 16%. The non-recruitment businesses at an aggregate level were also cash positive and generated INR 40 crores of cash in Q4 of FY '25. For the full year FY '25, for the stand-alone business, billings were INR 2,882 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 15%, and revenue was INR 2,654 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 11%. Billings and revenue, including Zwayam and DoSelect were INR 2,972 crores and INR 2,743 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 16% and 12%, respectively. Operating profit at a stand-alone level grew by 12% year-on-year to INR 973 crores, and the operating margin expanded to 37%. The stand-alone business generated cash from operation of INR 1,318 crores in FY '25, a Y-o-Y growth of 16%. The recruitment business generated cash of INR 1,344 crores in FY '25, and the non-recruitment businesses combined also generated a cash of INR 21 crores in FY '25, with a cash loss of INR 44 crores in FY '24. EPS before exceptional items net of tax and deferred tax for FY '25 stood at INR 77 pre-split of shares and INR 15 post-split of shares, a Y-o-Y growth of 17%. The company has received shareholders' approval to split the existing equity shares from a face value of INR 10 to a revised face value of INR 2. The cash balance of Info Edge including wholly-owned subsidiaries at the end of March 2025 stood at INR 4,786 crores. The Board has proposed a final dividend of INR 18 per share pre-split or INR 3.6 per share post-split. Along with the interim dividend, the total dividend of FY '25 is INR 30 per share pre-split or INR 6 per share post-split, a 36% year-on-year increase in dividend payout. The head count of the company as of March '25 was 6,065 people, yes. Moving on to segment-wise performance. Starting with the recruitment business. In Q4 of FY '25, billings grew by 18% to INR 740 crores and revenue grew by 13% to INR 511 crores. The operating profit improved by 8%, Y-o-Y to INR 278 crores and the operating profit margin was 54%. Cash generated from the recruitment operation was INR 532 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 16%. For FY '25 as a whole, in the recruitment business, billings grew by 15% to INR 2,158 crores and revenue grew by 10% to INR 1,983 crores. The operating profit stood at INR 1,116 crores, and the operating profit margin was 56%. Cash generated from the recruitment operation in FY '25 full year was INR 1,344 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 11%. The key operating highlights of the recruitment business in -- the billing growth rate in Q4 was broad-based across all segments, Tech, IT Services and BPM combined grew by 17%, GCCs by 19%, other sectors by 19% and the recruitment consultant segment by 15%. GCC has contributed around 16.5% of recruitment India B2B billings in FY '25. Key sectors like BFSI, health care and manufacturing infrastructure grew at double digits. The JobSpeak Index showed muted movement in Q4 '25, reflecting a moderate hiring environment. Despite this, our biddings improved, driven by growth across both our core business and niche and adjacent segments. Niche and adjacent businesses such as iimjobs, Naukri Gulf and Naukri FastForward have all continued a good growth trajectory in Q4 FY '25 as well with year-on-year billings up by 43%, 26% and 18%, respectively. Our employer branding solutions offered across platforms like Naukri, iimjobs, Hirist and AmbitionBox, have also been well received by our clients. We are working on strengthening these offerings further and expanding and penetrating the market a little more. FY '25 was also the first full year of monetization of Job Hai. This business has been growing well in terms of traffic. Although still small, it holds great potential and could become a sizable business in the medium to long term. On the job seeker side, our Naukri platform now hosts around 106 million resumes, and we -- and added an average of 22,000 resumes daily in Q4 of FY '25. On the recruiter side, the Naukri business served over 128,000 corporate customers in FY '25. We continue to invest aggressively in marketing activities in areas of B2C, B2B, branding and Job-seeker engagement, activities including IPL advertising, which started in March this year, leading to some impact in Q4 margin. In summary, our recruitment business continues to grow across all customer segments, complemented by a strong performance in our niche and adjacent businesses. We remain optimistic that this positive momentum will carry forward into the upcoming quarters if the hiring environment continues to be modest. Moving over to the Real Estate segment. In Q4 of FY '25, billings growth improved by 22% to INR 160 crores and revenue grew by 14% to INR 106 crores. Operating losses were INR 15 crores and the business generated INR 27 crores of cash from operations in Q4 of FY '25. For the full year, billings growth was 17% at INR 451 crores and revenue grew by 17% to INR 411 crores. Operating losses reduced by 31% to INR 48 crores in FY '25 versus INR 69 crores in FY '24. The 99acres business was cash profitable for the full year with cash generation of INR 2 crores from operations in FY '25 versus cash losses of INR 13 crores in FY '24. For 99acres, billing growth in Q4 was driven by growth in both the number of billed customers and in the average billing per customer. The broker and channel partner segment grew faster than developers. The number of live new project listings on the platform grew 11% in Q4 and the live resale plus rental listings from brokers grew by 27% in Q4. Listings from owners grew 14% year-on-year. We believe we gained a significant market share in Q4 and in H2 of last year. In upcoming quarters, 99acres will continue to focus its investment on growing its user and client base and aim to deliver a superior platform experience to help their users make the right real estate decisions. Moving over to the Matrimony business. In Q4 of FY '25, billings grew by 24% to INR 32 crores and revenue grew by 25% to INR 30 crores. Operating losses reduced on a year-on-year basis by 76% to INR 2 crores. Cash losses from operations also reduced by 73% to INR 2 crores in Q4 of '25 versus INR 9 crore in Q4 of '24. In FY '25 -- full year FY '25, billings grew by 13% to INR 111 crores and revenue grew by 29% to INR 110 crores. Operating losses reduced by 80% year-on-year to INR 12 crores in FY '25 versus INR 59 crores in FY '24. Cash loss from operations was INR 8 crores in FY '25 versus INR 55 crores in FY '24. In Q4, the business -- the Jeevansathi business team continued to build on its monetization efforts, capitalizing on the strongest marriage season of the year to grow billings. Enhancements to the recommendation system were also introduced to improve relevance, engagement and user retention. New monetization levers were rolled out early in the quarter, some of which are already showing positive impact on user conversion and revenue generation. Marketing investments are increasingly being made sharper to drive better efficiencies. The quarter also saw continued innovation in launching new content pieces, which were well received in our target markets. These initiatives helped the business build a salient brand amongst both prospects and their parents. The teams continue to focus -- the team remains focused on enhancing the platform experience through new feature development and by leveraging machine learning and Generative AI tools. Key engagement metrics such as profile acceptances and the frequency of 2-way chats continue to perform strongly. Moving on to the education business. In Q4 of FY '25, billing was INR 52 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 16%, and revenue grew by 2% to INR 40 crores. The business was at a break even level in terms of operating profit and generated cash from operations of INR 16 crores in Q4 of FY '25. In the full year, billing in Shiksha was INR 162 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 14%, and revenue grew by 8% to INR 150 crores. Operating profits were at a break even level for the full year and the Shiksha business generated cash from operations of INR 26 crores in FY '25. Within the Shiksha business, the domestic education business grew by 26% year-on-year, and the study abroad business declined by 16% year-on-year, leading to an overall billing growth of 14%. The domestic private universities and colleges continue to expand the course offerings beyond engineering with more choices available to students. The emergence of new private universities in India presents an opportunity for Shiksha to further expand its footprint. We are investing in creating more comprehensive student-friendly content and building deep domain expertise in this segment. High visa rejection rates for those aspiring to study in the U.S. and a decline in job prospects for students abroad have reduced student interest. Students are now opting to study more in the U.K. and Continental Europe. On the AI front, our current focus is on three key AI-driven priorities: enhancing existing products using AI, developing new AI-powered features in existing products and building brand-new products, which leverage AI. In line with this, we continue to upgrade our database product with AI and machine learning, resulting in improvements in recruiter productivity. Similarly, new AI models for job search and recommendations have driven a 15% to 20% year-on-year improvement in job seeker engagement. Our AI initiatives are -- continue to drive growth across all our verticals, recruitment, real estate, matrimony and education. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 750 crores in Q4 of '25 versus INR 657 crores for Q4 of FY '24. The total comprehensive loss was INR 9,710 crores in Q4 of '25 compared to a comprehensive income of INR 7,959 crores in Q4 of FY '24. Profit before tax without exceptional items in Q4 of '25 was INR 716 crores compared to INR 324 crores in Q4 of FY '24. To summarize, we continue to be enthusiastic about the growth opportunities across all our businesses. The recruitment business has shown a sustained growth trajectory in FY '25 with growth rebounding across all segments. To diversify and expand our client base, we are enhancing our go-to-market strategies and acquiring new customers. We have increased our focus on adding more GCCs and in acquiring -- and on acquiring new customers in the SMB segment and on expanding our presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and on penetrating deeper into non-IT and other sectors. Our niche and adjacent businesses, iimjobs, Hirist, Naukri Gulf, Naukri FastForward, DoSelect, AmbitionBox and Job Hai are performing well and unlocking new long-term growth opportunities. Our non-recruitment businesses continue to grow steadily and generated cash from their operation in FY '25. In 99acres, we are focused on expanding our user base, enhancing the platform, gaining market share and providing valuable content to support informed realistic decisions. We are also developing new offerings to strengthen the secondary business further, while enhancing our position in the primary new launch segment. Jeevansathi's shift to the premium model improved matching algorithms powered by AI and our continued efforts to increase monetization have driven top line growth and have succeeded in bringing the business closer to break even. Shiksha domestic business remains on a steady growth trajectory and has been profitable for a while. Across all our businesses, we are advancing the deployment of AI machine learning to enhance search and recommendation experiences and to develop new features and increasingly new products. Our robust cash generation and healthy cash reserves remain a significant strength, enabling us to navigate market cycles effectively. We continue to evaluate the best strategies to deploy this cash to maximize shareholder returns. We are confident that these actions lay a strong foundation for the next financial year and position us well for continued progress and sustained growth in the years to come. Thank you all. We are now happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Hitesh. We can now start the question-and-answer session. Anand, over to you.

The first question is from Sachin from Bank of America.

I have 3 questions. First question, wanted to understand on the marketing expense specifically in this quarter. We do see massive amount of Q-o-Q increment as well as Y-o-Y improvement in marketing expense. Any color in terms of where this was spent and the general thought process on how do you intend to spend marketing in the near term?

Yes. So this higher expenditure is on account of higher expenditure both in Naukri and in 99acres. We upped our spend in both the recruitment business and in the real estate business in Q4. Going forward, we normally take marketing costs quarter-on-quarter basis: one, competitor activity; two, our own goals for our businesses. In Jeevansathi -- in 99acres, like I highlighted, we seem to have gained some -- several points of share in the last few quarters. And that's why we upped our spend a little more so to see if we can gain even more share going forward. In Naukri, we are on IPL, which will -- which had an impact on -- some impact on what we spent last quarter and will also have an impact on how much we end up spending on marketing in Q1. And in general, sort of we've just upped the marketing a little bit to get more users on the platform, and it's been working well for us. However, we'll take decisions on marketing quarter-on-quarter going forward. We can't say how it will play out for the rest of the year.

And just to clarify, this is not led by increased competitive intensity, but more to drive market share and growth, right?

In 99acres, like I said, we were -- our marketing campaigns have been working well and we're delivering well for the platform, and therefore, we've upped our spend. It's not a result of higher competitive activity. In Naukri, I think it's just -- the team just felt that we've been out of the market. We've not been spending enough on marketing for a long time, and we need to sort of -- we are doing so many new things, and we need to sort of just be a little more visible for some more time. And that's why we are spending a little more than earlier.

And 99 appear to be closer to break even and there was a thought process that in this fiscal, it should be breaking even. Does it change from that perspective given the fact that you guys are spending a bit more on marketing now?

So we did generate some cash last year, I mean, just INR 2 crores, but we did generate some cash from operations in 99acres last year. We are -- growth in 99acres also accelerated in Q4. So full year growth was 17%, Q4 growth was 22%. We are -- if we get good response from our marketing efforts, then we will aim to grow the business faster. But where we end up at the end of the year will ultimately depend on how much revenue growth we're able to get. We are sensing that we are gaining share. We are -- our supply is looking up, our -- we're acquiring new customers. Our response is -- on the platform is like growing at a very high rates, rates we have not seen in the past. So we are a little -- we are bullish and we are investing more at the moment. Let's see how this plays out.

Got it. Second question, just following up in one of the opening remarks statement, you mentioned that you are optimistic on the growth. So I'm trying to understand where is the growth coming? And where is that optimism in Naukri? And clearly, there are 4 buckets which you guys have mentioned, which is, is it the tech IT, recruitment consultants, GCCs or other sectors? Any specific area, which is predominantly driving a large part of the growth and which...

Sorry. No, no. So you're right. See, growth was very slow. In FY '23, '24, we hardly grew, and we started the year -- last year also on a very slow note. We grew by, I think, 7%, 8% in Q1. We've closed the year with 18% billing growth in the recruitment business. Now it's not as if it's a very hot hiring market. It's a modest hiring market, and you can see that in our JobSpeak numbers. I think, one, it's a better hiring market than it was perhaps a year ago, but it's not a very hot market. Two, like I did say in my comments, some of our adjacent verticals are also doing well. So we've launched some new products. We've launched some new offerings. Our Naukri Gulf business continues to grow at a healthy rate. The FastForward business continues to grow at a healthy rate. iimjobs and Hirist have also been doing well. Data products and some of the branding solution that we've launched also received a decent response from our customers. So as a result of all these efforts and also like we've been investing in AI, and while we have not launched many new products, at least our algorithms are a lot better than earlier. So I don't know if that's -- and internally, our metrics tell us that everything is 15%, 20% better than it used to be. So I don't know if that's having an impact as well. So as far as the optimism for next year, it's -- we are assuming that the market will continue to be reasonable if the economy continues to grow at 6%, 6.5% per annum. There are no major changes in the way companies hire, then hopefully, this growth will sustain, but let's see.

Got it. And last question, I just wanted to understand how should one think about the steady-state billings growth for the current fiscal? And I'm coming from a point of view that in the last 7 to 8 quarters, we saw good growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis in billings. Last quarter, as you said, it ended at 18%. Should the mid-20s be something which is very much achievable and that is what we could see in the next few quarters?

It will depend on the hiring environment. It will depend on whether hiring picks up or not. There is a lot of uncertainty as you -- as we all know in the world around us. It's very hard to predict what's going to happen even next week, forget about what's going to happen in the full year. We are taking it quarter-by-quarter. All I can say at this point in time is that if the economy continues to grow at 6%, 6.5% and if there's no major sort of incident or episode and then we will try and sustain this kind of growth rate at least.

Next question is from Ankur Rudra from JPMorgan.

So the first question, just again on the recruitment segment, it's been very strong and surprisingly strong and thank you for the color in terms of breakup of the segment is very helpful. Now what I did notice is that there was a sharp increase in the number of billed customs, especially in the quarter versus prior years also it seems to have gone up quite a bit. I also noticed that you've done extremely well in your Tech, IT services, BPM segment, which seems a bit surprised given the uncertainty in the market that you also referred to. And the fact that the listed IT services companies are barely hiring. So what drives this difference. Are you gaining market share? Are you doing something different? Is there any change in go-to-market or any pricing changes that explains your much stronger billing rate growth performance and also the metrics, right? Your customers also going up quite a bit.

Like I did say in my comments earlier, and like -- see what we've done over the last couple of years is -- or maybe 18 months is, one, we've grown the number of offices we have, right? We have increased our focus on acquiring small and medium enterprises as customers. We have these adjacent businesses, and we have -- we are trying to penetrate the market more with those offerings, whether it's DoSelect or data products or the premium offerings we have and so on and so forth. So I think it's a combination of 3, 4 things. As far as IT services companies go, see, I did sort of -- I've been saying this -- see what happened post COVID was that many of them ended up over hiring and they've built up a big bench. And therefore, they stopped hiring for a while, and they got rid of their benches. And at least now, even if they're not growing headcount, they have to replace the people who are leaving. And our hiring -- our revenue is a function of attrition. So gross hiring, not necessarily net hiring. So it's also -- it's a function of what happens to attrition rates and of course, also to headcount. So my sense is that the market is, at least IT service company, most of them are at a point where their attrition rates have stabilized. They are replacing the people who are leaving. They may not be adding a lot of headcount. But it's like -- which, as I said, is a modest sort of environment. And of course, we have the cheapest way to hire. And in a modest environment, companies have some time to hire, right? So it's not as -- so they would ideally not want to spend on recruitment firms and so on, which are a lot more expensive way of hiring. So perhaps we are gaining some share also, it's hard for me to say.

And in terms of the current quarter, a lot of things have changed from the outlook of IT services companies given tariffs and whatnot. What has been the conversations in the quarter? How do you see current trends going in the last couple of months? Whatever you can share? And again, across the various segments, across the GCCs and the tech IT services, BPM segment that you see?

So unfortunately, what happens in our case is are all the renewals are at quarter end. So we get to know what really happens. There's a lot of discussion. There's a lot of negotiation and companies tend to negotiate hard. But we really only get to know around in the last week of June as to how the quarter is going. But what I can say for sure is there is -- a lot of it is very company specific. So there are some companies that are doing better than other companies. And there, we don't have a problem there. We still continue -- in many cases, still getting a 30%, 40% jump on what we billed the client last year, right? So -- but it's very, very company specific.

Appreciate it. Maybe switching gears a bit on Blue Collar, if you can talk a bit about Job Hai. How is that doing? If I just look at the headline traffic that Job Hai gets versus the market leader, let's say, like an apna or somebody else, there seems to be a very significant gap. So what is missing? What's the challenge in terms of getting the right product market fit here, and how will you take the engagement up?

So in our view, there is not that much of a gap anymore given at least the numbers -- from the numbers we track. And see, our approach in Job Hai has been this is a long-term play. This is not a market which is going to happen in 1 or 2 years. And we've been investing in building the product. We continue to follow a freemium model. And we believe we've been rapidly gaining share in terms of traffic at least over the last few months. And our focus -- our approach is a little different from the others. We are sort of right now focusing more on NCR, and we want to make the model work in the NCR market. And once we get to a point -- in the NCR market, at least, our team believes that we are already like up there, almost as big as the #1 player, which is not a apna, which according to our team is Job Hai -- is, sorry, WorkIndia. So -- and if the model succeeds in NCR, and then we will take it to other cities a little more aggressively. So that's the approach we are following in Job Hai. We started monetizing last year small sums, but we did about INR 1 crore in March, full year, we did INR 6 crores. So baby steps, but we're focusing more on getting the unit economics right, getting the model, right and then we will scale.

If it does not work properly, would you be open to consolidation in this segment?

We haven't really thought about it. Right now, it looks like it's working. So we'll at least give it some more time before we start thinking consolidation.

Just last question on A&P. You mentioned it went up because of IPL in the last quarter. I will...

Not just IPL, in general, we've been -- because IPL is -- we've only accounted for some IPL spend this quarter because IPL I think March, April. So -- but in general, sort of our team feels that we should be doing a little more marketing at this stage. So that's why the cost went up. IPL was one part.

Sure. I mean, I'm guessing that continues for one more quarter, but how are you thinking about it going forward? And why -- who are you marketing towards? Is it mainly for candidates? And why do you think you need to have this -- the brand presence there?

Yes. So it's mostly marketing to job seekers. And so our team feels that there are certain segments where we need to make more inroads, right? And that will help us in the long run. Certain geographies where we need to do more, which will help us again in the long run. Certain segments, where we perhaps were missing for some time, and there are lots of new job seekers who hit the market every year, so we need to be seen. So I think that's really the reason. And we are experimenting with different sort of platforms and different sort of ways and means of marketing. So -- but this is an expense we can control any time. So it's a tap, which can be turned off at any point in time. We have been -- we're getting decent response to the marketing efforts we are putting in. So let's see. We'll continue with this for some more time and then take a call.

Thank you, Ankur. Next question is from Nikhil from Nuvama.

Congratulations on very strong number. Hitesh, I'll start with margin first. In this quarter, the margins were obviously quite a bit of lower than last quarter. And we have seen promotional expense, at least in FY '25 was limited to Q1. This time, it is now happening in Q4 as well as extending to Q1. Is there was some right shifting of expense to -- I mean, upfronting of expense to Q4, so let's say, the impact in Q1 would be lower than last year? Or is it fair to assume that, at least for now, the marketing expense would be higher even going ahead?

Like I said, marketing, we decide quarter-by-quarter. In 99acres, for example, we reduced marketing expenditure over some time, and then we ramped it up again because we changed our marketing strategy and the new marketing strategy started working for us. And because it started working for us and the ROI was very positive, we ramped up our marketing spend. And I think that will continue. So in 99acres, we will continue to invest aggressively in marketing. And I think we've gained significant share in the last 6 months. I hope that sustains going forward. So in Naukri, like I said, again, we'll decide quarter-on-quarter. There were some goals we wanted to -- we were chasing, like we felt that we were -- we didn't have enough CVs in some geographies. We -- in some segments, we wanted to go after a certain type of audience. So there were some things, which our team felt were important.and strategic from a long-term standpoint, and we wanted to do sort of invest behind those efforts. And it seems to be working. I mean, of course, the results from marketing will show only in subsequent quarters. You won't get the results immediately. The returns will not be immediate. But we -- but it's helping us meet our strategic long-term objectives, and it will continue for some time.

Second one on employee cost, even employee cost this quarter, I mean, bucked up by 250 basis points. Generally, we haven't seen this kind of seasonality in Q4, even there was a decent increase in employee count as well. So I mean, is it more to do with as a kind of demand we are anticipating? Or is it more like disconnect we generally see between the billing growth and cost increase?

See, in Q4, Q4 is our biggest quarter. And normally, we set aggressive targets, and -- but the variable payout is linked to billing growth not to revenue growth, right? So part of the bump you see is because we met our targets in software businesses, and therefore, the variable payout was a little higher than expected because that's more linked to billing growth than revenue growth, number one. Number two, see, we are investing aggressively in AI and machine learning and Generative AI. And that investments, we are a little ahead of the curve on that one, and it's cheap. And because of AI investments, we need to buy more servers, we need to hire more people, and these people are not cheap, they're expensive. But I think these investments are again strategic and very important from a long-term standpoint. And hopefully, if we execute well, we will see their returns in the quarters to come. And most of these investments are being made in Naukri.

Yes. Hitesh, for last 2, 3 quarters, you had talked about AI and GenAI in particular. Two parts to it. First one, are we seeing some new start-ups coming and trying to enter, let's say, job market? We have seen some of it getting funded recently. So are we seeing at least some niche area where we are seeing higher competition? These areas are obviously growing faster than overall industry. And second part of the question is, you have mentioned, I think, 2 quarters back that you're investing in AI, but the monetization of this AI investment will be much more faster. So any quantifiable data you can tell us maybe the product you launched or where we are in this monetization journey?

See, AI continues to surprise us. AI is evolving very rapidly. It's a horizontal technology, can be -- there could be AI in everything. It's like there's -- just you can have AI in HR, you can have AI in finance, you can have AI in the product offerings, you can have AI in whatever, right? It's like that kind of technology. So as far as AI hiring start-ups go, we are not seeing any impact from any AI hiring startup as yet. At least on our business, we -- there's nothing which has come to our -- which is bubbling up and which we are seeing or our sales team has pointed out to us as yet. So I'm sure there's a lot of action, and I'm sure there are a lot's of startups getting funded, but there's nothing that we are seeing on the horizon as yet, which is impacting our business. See, as far as our AI investments go, there are multiple types of investments we are making in AI. One is leveraging -- one is basic classic machine learning. So this is, let's say, call it, AI 1.0, right? Classing machine learning to improve our recommendation engines, to improve our search engines, to improve our matching engines. This is not stuff that you will see as -- on the outside. But I can tell you that all are -- in Jeevansathi and in Naukri, wherever we have applied the latest sort of models, we've seen a 15% to 20% kicker in terms of all the metrics, we track, right? So whether it's the number of acceptances in Jeevansathi, whether it's the number of job applications on Naukri, everything. Wherever we've applied some of these models, the latest models, we've seen a 15%, 20% kicker in our metrics. And hopefully, it will result in some revenue at some point in time. And maybe it's already helping. Second is Generative AI, call it AI 2.2 -- 2.0 or whatever, where we are trying to use Generative AI to launch new features. So I'll give you an example. We have -- we've launched an AI listing in 99acres. Basically, what happens is it's -- you record the broker's voice and you have the listing. And you can actually have the listing in the broker's voice. So it's a sample you record, but you can sort of hear the listing, the broker's voice. Now cool feature, a lot of people are upgrading, a lot of clients are upgrading to this type of listing. And we have lots of use cases where we are using Generative AI to, for example, if there are lots of reviews on the platform, you want to give a summary, Generative AI, you can help people post jobs faster, you can give a summary of the resume all kinds of things that are possible, Generative AI, which we are doing. So new features with Generative AI that's again another AI, we were investing. Third is brand new products. So I mentioned data products. So we have a whole suite now of products, which we offer to companies to help them do their talent and salary planning, right? So again, a lot of companies have started paying us for these offerings, again, very early days, but this is using our proprietary data. We are piloting right now as we speak, Agentic AI offering, which is, again, now call it -- let's say call it AI 3.0, which is basically, we have built a recruiter agent for companies which can help them do what they used to do in 10 days earlier in 10 hours. And this is being beta tested in about -- with 10 or 12 companies. And now we are moving to the commercial testing phase. Enough companies are sort of saying we are happy to pay you. We have to figure out the pricing. We'll have to figure out how sort of -- or ties up with our overall sort of strategy. But these are examples of brand new products. Now we are investing in these products. And as a result, our AI team has grown substantially over the last few years. And we are not monetizing very aggressively, but hopefully, the benefits will accrue to us over a period of time. And then lastly, of course, is AI for our own internal productivity to help us save costs, right? There, we've taken baby steps. It's not been a very big focus area for us. But slowly, we are now encouraging everybody in the company also to see how they can leverage AI to become more productive and more importantly, to just do stuff faster and more innovative.

Any comment on competition in this area?

I'd say I -- see the regular competitors we have, I'm sure they're trying to do things as well using AI. But I can tell you, it's not that easy. It's not easy to attract the right kind of talent. It's not easy to retain them. It's not easy to make AI work for you. A lot of people may claim to be doing AI, but to make AI really work for you from a business standpoint is not easy.

Thanks for sharing additional data on segments. appreciate it. And thanks, Sanjeev and his team for sharing data regarding the kind of return you have generated since 2019. Obviously, we knew about Zomato and Policybazaar, but especially written since 2019 and other investments, really appreciate it.

Thank you, Nikhil. The next question is from Swapnil from JM Financial.

My first question is on the breakup of your recruitment segment billings. You did allude to Naukri Gulf or FastForward and iimjobs jobs are doing well for you. But in -- could you put it into context as to how much contribution does these businesses actually do? I remember you guys used to report Naukri India separately and the other businesses separately, used to use that kind of a share at one point of time. But how that has moved could also help us understand the potential in the new business that we have -- which is there?

Do we give out these numbers?

So, Hitesh, we used to give product basically how much Resdex is contributing, job posting is contributing that we have stopped because of we sell all these services as a package deals now. So they're very difficult to attribute, so therefore we have stopped doing that. But especially for like these segments like Naukri FastForward or iimjobs, Hirist, we don't give that separately. But obviously, Swapnil, from Hitesh's commentary, you can refer to the growth rates these businesses are growing, but we have not been disclosing the size of the business.

I mean the only point I'm trying to make clear is that it will help us better understand the time or the opportunity, which is there to [indiscernible] and get a sense as to how the core business are doing versus the other business. That's why I'm coming with that question. If you can give some color going ahead, I mean, it would be helpful. That's the limited point there. The second question is with respect to your corporate cost. I think your corporate cost, on a quarterly basis, used to be around INR 14 crores to INR 15 crores till a couple of quarters back, if you just go back, a few quarters back, but now they have seem to doubled, close to around INR 30 crores. Any particular reason there has been a substantial jump over the last couple of quarters, especially?

Can any one take that?

Yes. So I think it's mostly like earlier, Hitesh said that in Q4, we have booked a lot of management bonuses. And so it relates to either because of the improved performance in our businesses, including the investments that we have done. I think it relates to some of those type of expenses and many of them could be onetime.

Okay. Got it. And the third question is with respect to your cash allocation policy because we have a substantial bit up on our balance sheet, roughly around INR 4,800 crores. I understand you have increased your dividend decently this time around. But still, if I were to just take out your deferred sales and the payout that you would be making this year, you will still be having a substantially large amount of cash sitting on your balance sheet. I mean, could our payout increase materially from what you are doing right now? Given that, unless and until we have any specific requirement of it, which -- I mean, you're also generating every year a decent amount of cash. So tangled between those things, I'm just trying to understand like do we really need so much cash on the balance sheet? And wouldn't it be rather distributed to the shareholders?

You want to take that?

Yes. So look, you're right. The way we look at cash is that cash is a very central part of our overall strategic thinking. And we look at the deferred revenue, which is advanced to -- advance from customers. We look at what the contingency and reserves that we require in operating businesses. We also continue to look at what the other opportunities of investment, whether it's -- like I say, it could be anything in the operating businesses like AI or Job Hai, we are continuing to invest, but it also evaluate if there are any opportunity for any inorganic activity, which did not necessarily be it's like 100% acquisition, but we have made some strategic investments. And it could be a significant minority to a 51% type of holding also in some of these companies. So those type of opportunities we continue to evaluate. As you would have seen that recently, we got the shareholders' approval for another fund for about INR 1,000 crores. So we look at that as well. And so we are keeping some reserves for the investment activities as well. We have come out with the returns that we have been generating on the investment side as well. So that part of business also would require some funds. So we continue to keep the eye on that. So having said that, every quarter, we look at what the cash balances are, and we evaluate what the opportunities that looks in front of us. Keeping that in view, I think we think that we have increased the dividend as of now. We might continue even more as we go ahead. Again, it depends on the business and how we evaluate the opportunities that are in front of us.

Got it. And just a last one on your guidance for profitability in 99acres and Jeevansathi. I mean, you did allude to in some calls that you're looking to make them profitable next 12 months or something. Obviously, you also mentioned now that there has been some rework on the marketing strategy, especially in 99acres. So any rethought as to those -- that guidance? Are we sticking to that irrespective of the changes in our decision with regards to market shares and other things? I'm just trying to get a sense as like will we stick to it? Or are we revising anything?

See 2 years ago, we were losing maybe INR 200 to INR 220 crores a year in our non-recruitment businesses. And we had -- we worked very hard over the last 2 years to get them do. This year, we generated about I think INR 20 crores, INR 30 crores in terms of cash from operations from all the non-recruitment businesses put together. 99acres, INR 2 crores positive, Shiksha about INR 25 crores, Jeevansathi maybe INR 5 crore, INR 7, INR 8 crores negative. Now see, it's not as if we want to lose money, we would ideally want to make money in all these verticals. But if we see an opportunity to gain share and improve our long-term competitive position, then we'll go for it, right? So in 99acres, we've gained some share in the last 6 months, and we are continuing on that path. Now if revenue growth is solid, then it's not as if we will lose money, yes, we would want to make money. But if revenue growth lags by a couple of quarters, we'll still go for share, right? In Jeevansathi, again, we'll try to break even this year as well. But at the same time, we would want to continue to grow at 20%, 25%. The industry will be growing at 8%, 10%, but we want to continue to gain share even in Jeevansathi. So that's our philosophy. We don't want to lose a lot of money. But if we sense an opportunity to gain share, we'll go for it.

And any chance that there could be a possible M&As given that -- I mean any thoughts around -- I mean this is long-pending question, but still...

For that, we have to [indiscernible].

Next question is from Damodaran from Acuitas Capital.

Just one question and follow-up on Jeevansathi. So -- I mean Jeevansathi has regained it's INR 100 crore plus top line and you are almost on the verge of breaking even. And all this was achieved in the backdrop of the industry leader declining. So I mean the question is, do you think the industry has saturated and incrementally all the players will continue to fight for the same market? And if that is the case, what change do you think you will be making to your capital allocation strategy there?

Yes. As far as the matrimony market is concerned, you see the category is growing at 8% to 10% per annum. We are a small player in the category. We're a #3 player. Maybe it's a INR 1,000 crore category, we do about INR 100 crores -- or maybe INR 900 crores, we do about INR 100 crores. We've done a bunch of things over the last few years to improve our sort of standing in this industry. We've worked very hard on -- we changed our model. We've improved -- worked very hard on the AI. We've cut cost. We've focused on a few markets. So we've done a host of things to get business to where it is today. It's not been easy for us. And we are growing well now. And I think we are gaining share. And we would want to continue on this path for the next couple of years and see where it takes us. The industry is what it is. I mean, it's a 3-player market. Until the time it continues to be a 3-player market, it's going to be very hard for any one player to make high margin, so -- or to grow very rapidly.

Okay. So you don't think that's in some kind of -- I mean it's reached some saturation point? Or is it in structural decline or something like that given the leader, I mean declining last year.

No, I think the leader may be declining because the leader is losing share. I mean that's what I suspect is could be happening, I don't know, because we really don't operate much in the South, and the leader is a very strong player in the South. So -- but I suspect if the leader is declining, it could be that -- it could be they're losing share.

And they are unlikely to be losing share to us, right, Hitesh?

Yes. So they may have lost share to us in the North because we are very strong in the North. But for them, the North is not a very big part of their business, or was never a very big part of their business.

Next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi.

Congratulations on the results. My first question was actually on Resdex, and I think you've answered part of it, but in general, I wanted to better understand the comment you made on your packages have changed. And so separating your revenue mix from Resdex and others does not make sense anymore, if you could elaborate on that? Because in general, I would have thought that with all these commentaries, the share of Resdex would start to meaningfully decline from here?

So I think the real challenge there is that when we sell to customers, we have a rate card, let's say, for data products, for ARX, for branding, for a bunch of other offering, iimjobs, Hirist, et cetera. And when we sell to them, it's often like a package, okay, listen, this bundle, that bundle. And then we have to allocate to different products as to -- but is the customer really paying for all those offerings? Or is it paying for the bundle and for the value it's deriving from bundle? So it's very hard to see what's really happening. And for that reason, we have stopped sort of giving out this data. Is that correct, Vineet?

Yes.

And Hitesh, also because -- I mean obviously on the recruiter -- on the candidate side, the side attracts a lot of traffic, and there is branding opportunity there as well. So is there -- are there low-hanging fruits there in terms of how you can improve your overall monetization outside of Resdex? Just simply the share monetization of the traffic that you get people uploading and updating resumes and whatnot, is that something that has meaningfully changed?

Yes. So like I -- so it's not as if we got to regular general advertising, but we focus on recruitment advertising. And so last year, we grew our recruitment advertising business, which is what we call internally branding, okay, which is different from listings and Resdex substantially, of course, on a small base, right? So we are working on some of these initiatives, and we saw good traction last year. Perhaps one reason why -- and the reality of life is that everybody wants to attract good talent. And now there are so many GCCs, there are so many companies fighting for this talent, outside the top 50, 100 companies already really knows what the rest are all about. So everybody wants to sort of showcase themselves and tell the world how they're different. So it's an opportunity we see. And some of the offerings we rolled out last year seem to have been received well by customers. So let's see if we are able to sustain this growth momentum going forward.

And my second question is to Sanjeev on the investment portfolio. So first off, thanks again to the entire team for the disclosures. And I'm very mindful that Zomato, PB Fintech type outcomes cannot guided. But on a long enough time scale, what is the kind of IRR you would classify as success or base expectation?

See, both carry post expense IRR of, I think, for the 2019/'20 vintage fund, anything above 18%, 19% would be decent, above 25% would be, I think, excellent. Now where you end up will depend on how many outliers you end up getting from that portfolio, if any? Okay? Now -- so see, IRR is tracking where it is, but you got to understand the way IRR is measured until you actually get exits or a company list where you have a mark-to-market. The proxy variable is that did the company raise money from another investor at a high valuation. If yes, then you mark it up and you overcome the IRR. Now given the private market valuations, the go up, they go down, companies do well or sensible valuation, but operationally, they get in trouble sometimes, sometimes they blow up. We have seen that. IRRs can move up around. And IRRs also have this time decay element as no doubt you guys are well aware, perhaps more than me. [Foreign Language] Even though company is doing equally well. [Foreign Language] So I would -- I mean IRRs are indicative and they should be taken somewhat with the pinch of salt. And until the companies get listed or sold or we get exits, we don't really know [Foreign Language].

No, no, that's helpful, Sanjeev. Always good to have color on how you're thinking about this.

We report IRR because it's industry practice. And we use this method because that's industry practice. But essentially [indiscernible] exits, IRR -- see, I saw a good tweet the other day somewhere saying so you can't eat IRR. You can only eat MOIC. So IRR [Foreign Language].

Hitesh, there is a question in the chat box from Anand, what kind of investments has the company made on AI so far? And do you see it going up?

Yes. So now AI has become, like I said, there's AI in everything. So there's a central team. Now that central team itself is very large and has grown maybe 5 or 6x in terms of head count over the last 4 or 5 years. And of course -- and then, of course, we've added servers and lots of other sort of things to go with it. But now increasingly in every part of the business, like I said, we are encouraging everyone to either use AI tools or use Generative AI. It's not as if we have to make everything ourselves, we can also buy AI. So we are encouraging everyone to sort of do their own thing. So even -- so now marketing teams are using AI tools. You have design teams using AI tools, you have -- soon you'll have engineers use sort of AI tools. So the overall -- so I would suspect that at least -- that today, at least 60%, 70% of what we do has some element of AI in it in terms of innovation and product development. So the centric team, which is the specialized team, that may be, let's say, 100 people plus/minus. But there is -- every part of the business is also now trying to see -- figure out how to use AI in their department, which is separate, and that we're not even counting that anywhere.

Thanks, Hitesh. So Vineet, that was the last live question from Vijit, Citibank, and the chat box also questions are answered.

Yes. So I guess -- thank you, everyone. I guess on behalf of Info Edge, we can conclude this call. Thank you for joining.

Thank you, everyone. Have a great evening.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you and bye-bye.