Medi Assist Healthcare Services Limited (MEDIASSIST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Medi Assist Q4 FY '25 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Niraj Didwania, Senior Vice President, Strategy. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you. Good evening, and a very warm welcome to each one of you to Medi Assist Healthcare Services Limited Earnings Conference Call as we discuss quarter and year ended 31st March 2025 numbers with you. The results of the company, the press release and the investor presentations have been uploaded to the exchanges and distributed through our mailing list. We apologize for the delay in doing so by 5 minutes. Please note, any forward-looking statements are to be relied upon based on your own judgment, and all financials and operating numbers discussed on the call are based on either audited financials or management estimates. And hence, investors should refer to them only on the basis of uploaded financial statements of the company. Without further ado, I would now like to hand over the call to Dr. Vikram Chhatwal, Chairman and Whole-Time Director, Medi Assist Healthcare Services.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen on the call, and a very warm welcome to our earnings call today. It is with great pleasure that I'm here with my colleagues, our CEO, Satish Gidugu; our CFO, Sandeep Daga; and our Senior Vice President, Strategy, Niraj Didwania. As I and my colleagues walk you through a quick presentation, I believe, which has been mailed to you. I would request that those on the call, please refer to the slides on the attachment in the mail that was sent. As we begin today's call and before we walk into the FY '25 results and Q4 FY '24/'25 results, I'd like to take this opportunity to once again give you all on this call, a sense of where and how our business continues to perform. And more importantly, from a strategic perspective, how the proposition of a TPA evolving into that of a health benefits administrator. And I believe that we are at that juncture as an organization where we continue to see not only improved operational and financial performance, but more importantly, I come to you today, sharing that -- the proposition as a business that is part and parcel of the health care insurance ecosystem, continues to remain strong with clear strategic direction and an increasing role or canvas of services that we, as a health benefits administrator offer up to the ecosystem. As you all know, we continue to work actively with provider networks. We continue to work actively on the group and retail portfolio. And most importantly, we work actively with our principles who are insurers on one hand, and of course, public health schemes under PM-JAY. As I think of the business and its role today in enabling the health insurance ecosystem, the big shift that we continue to see as being a differentiator for us as a business is the evolution of us being just historically a claims processing company, a hospital network management company and a customer service company to actually today coming to you as an established organization that is data-driven and the core role of data and technology and analytics that we continue to participate in and enhance value across the stakeholders. And supporting this data-driven analytics backbone is services beyond claims management, which include technology services, fraud detection services, network enablement services, international private medical insurance and last of all, predictive analytics. Our continuous engagement through personalized health journeys and digital touch points have truly and continued to become integral to the ecosystem in India. Last of all, and most importantly, we continue to collaborate and partner with insurers, build preferred provider networks. And of course, with technology innovators that build integrated outcome focused on the health ecosystem as a whole. To date, as a reflection of that strength in technology, machine learning, AI and analytics, we today operate not only within our ecosystem, but we have two customers, insurers in this case, who operate on Medi Assist's technology platform. We have 19 insurers who use the Medi Assist network of hospitals. And our AI and machine learning offering in terms of automation, in claims adjudication, fraud prevention and prediction of cost, we have three customers who today use our capabilities to enable their ecosystems. All of this is reflecting in the financial performance of the company. And as you will see, we have expanded the scope, not only in our India business, but you will also see and hear from our team, the expansion in the international private medical insurance market focused again on India globalizing. In summary, before I hand over, I think, your company today has demonstrated and continues to deliver on its promise as a third-party administrator, while innovating in partnerships, innovating in technology, innovating in member engagement solutions and innovating in adding both inpatient and outpatient services and capabilities to insurers. With that, I take this opportunity to hand this call over to Satish Gidugu, our Chief Executive Officer, to walk you through the highlights on the financial performance of the business and specific data points that he'd like to share with you. Over to you, Satish.

Thank you, Dr. Chhatwal. Good evening to everyone who's joined us today. Thank you for your time. The investor presentation has been uploaded. For those of you who have access to it, we are using the same deck, and I will read out the pages whenever I'm talking about some of the points so that you have access to it. On Page 5, as we talk about how we have fared in terms of growth across key segments. Within the group business, we continue to be a market leader with 30.3% market share. And what really got us here is that our retention has been higher than usual at 95%. This is on a combined base of portfolio of Medvantage and Raksha that we've integrated. Now over 10,000-plus corporate accounts. And not just that, some of the private and SAHI insurer premiums that we service have actually grown 42% in the group business. And all of this leading to our grow premiums growing by 12.4% from FY '24 to FY '25 against the industry growth rate of 10.5%. Again, in retail, we have focused on -- we brought our technology-led customer-first approach to retail, significant work on digital innovation and expanding access and affordability in terms of cashless for retail policyholders and working very closely with insurers who have significant in-house operations by integrating with them on technology, network and fraud detection. This led to our retail book growing by 29.4% from FY '24 to FY '25 against the industry growth rate of 12.2%. And in the IPMI market, international private medical insurance market, our Mayfair entity continues to look at making the most of the opportunity of India in global expansion, Indians traveling abroad. And as I mentioned in some of the earlier calls, we have a technology platform now for the international private medical insurance business that we've built out and combining that with Mayfair's access to over 0.5 million providers across 185 plus countries. We are able to now deliver a significant amount of IPMI services to both global insurance and more importantly, many Indian insurers today. As a result, our Mayfair active membership has grown 71% during the periods that we are comparing. Lastly, government. The government segment is seeing a lot of action, especially with Insurance for All vision by the Indian government, serving the most vulnerable section of the population, the government attempting to bring multiple categories of beneficiaries under this umbrella. We continue to actively participate in government health schemes PAN India. We power fairly large-scale programs across multiple states and central schemes. And even on the -- our government revenues have grown over 24% between FY '24 and FY '25. And I'm flipping to Page 6. And some of this and most of this is backed by our investments in technology to drive scale and leadership. We continue to invest annually about 5% to 7% of our revenues in technology to build core differentiation and innovation. We processed over 8.9 million inpatient and outpatient claims just in our group and retail business, and processed many more in the government business. And there are three or four distinct offerings that Dr. Vikram alluded to, that our tech is actually enabling us to do, which is claims management at scale. Our platform today allows us to process almost a core of claims every year across multiple hubs in a seamless manner. And the same platform today is made available in a SaaS model for other insurers to use. There are two insurers currently operate on our claims management platform. And the third area is where we have invested heavily in terms of data analytics and insights, however, leveraging predictive analytics to forecast whether it's claims cost, high-risk, fraud-based and abuse cases and policy level analytics, leading to better decision-making for insurance companies. And we've also taken leadership in enabling compliance requirements for insurance and especially with the regulatory mandates for faster claims processing, run towards 100% cashless adoption and delivering cashless hospitalization and discharges in finite time windows. As you may be aware from our previous calls, we now publish some of our turnaround times in real time on our website in terms of how we deliver adherence to the regulatory mandates. Moving forward on Page 7, there's -- and some of the other capabilities that we brought in during FY '25 using our technology, we spoke about the global platform. The prediction feature, resulting in Raksha Prime discharges, which is an innovation which actually completely eliminates the traditional discharge process. That's commonly talked about in the insurance and cashless conjunction. Today, over nearly 20,000 patients walk out of the hospital every month, even before the bills get generated, because we've eliminated the discharge process. In all of FY '25, we delivered over 100,000 such discharges. And we then took some of this predictive capability and enabled a prediction tool for out-of-pocket expenses, where we are enabling our membership to plan in a financially prudent manner, the facility, the kind of room, the kind of procedures that they want to undergo and estimate the out-of-pockets in each of those scenarios and make an appropriate call from where they want to get a hospitalization done. And lastly, we've also launched a consent feature, which is our innovation to improve policyholder experience. Today, in reimbursement -- starting with the reimbursement, which will be expanded to all of the claim types. Once we approve a claim, we are able to send a detailed provisional approval letter to the member and actually gave them a chance to say, I'm okay or I need a clarification or help me understand these reductions or I have an additional policy, can you help me use that. So we're actually enabling those conversations in real time. And almost 92% of all the claims that we process in reimbursement today go through this feature, with a 55% that are actually acting on those [ lives ] explicitly saying they're okay to move forward with less than 5% of those members coming back and saying, could we have a conversation about this claim before you finalize the outcomes. And this is leading to a reduction in cost per claim. This is improving customer satisfaction in our portfolio. Then move to Page #8. Continuing on the investments that we've made in the AI space. We focused heavily on fraud-based and abuse elimination, more so specifically on the fraud prevention. We have delivered nearly INR 400 crores of savings on account of fraud prevention to insurers that we work with in FY '24. And that's over 1.5x the value of the previous year, with the exit run rates being much higher. And today, our machine learning models are able to evaluate over 160 parameters to extremely reliably detect and flag potentially fraudulent cases. And the other feature that this capability is enabling is allowing us to reduce the number of claims that need to be investigated, improving member experience, because our sample sizes are coming down while the outcomes are actually moving up. Moving to Page 9. While we did all of this in terms of growth and technology, we have been steadily improving our financial performance as we continue to start to accrue the synergies from Raksha and Medvantage consolidations from 21% to an exit Q4 '25 of 21.6% EBITDA margin resulting in over 21.3% margin for FY '25. And if I excluded a couple of one-timers like some of the transaction costs, and one-timers, which is almost a 40 bps number, this is an adjusted EBITDA level is approximately at 21.7% for FY '25. And our revenue per head count has grown further from 1.38 million to 1.41 million this year. And our net cash flow from operating activities was INR 138 crores. Moving on to Page 11, to talk about some of the operational highlights. Our total premium under management crossed the 20,000 mark, and we crossed our 10,000 mark back in March 2022. That was 3 years ago. We have crossed 21,000 mark in group and retail premiums that we administer now, and we have improved our market share both in group and retail. Moving on to Page 12. Some highlights that we probably have already covered in the previous two pages. Our industry growth rate, for example, in private and SAHI in group was at 12.6%, but we -- the premium that we administered for that cohort grew by about 42% as we continue to power many of the private and SAHI insurers and get into the group segment and deliver great service that they're already known for in the retail segment. Our retail has grown at 29.4% against an industry growth of 12.2%. And from -- and we've received the regulatory approvals just 2 days ago to acquire 100% equity shareholding in Paramount Health Services & Insurance TPA Pvt. Ltd by our wholly owned subsidiary, Medi Assist Insurance TPA Private Limited. And as we move forward, we continue to work with NHA and the regulator to enable insurance to transition international health claims exchange framework and also improving compliance to master circular. I will now hand over to Sandeep Daga, our CFO, to give you a quick overview of the financial highlights for both Q4 and FY '25.

Thank you, Satish, and I welcome, all the participants. Thank you for joining the call at this point of time. The financial highlights for Q4 FY 2025, total income was INR 196.6 crores, which was a growth of 14.9 percentage over the corresponding period of the previous year. Revenue from contracts with customers, excluding other income, was INR 188.9 crores, which was equivalent to 13.2 percentage over the same period last year. Revenue from contracts included 13.2 percentage from government business and 5.7 percentage from our international benefits business. EBITDA during the quarter was INR 40.7 crores, which was equivalent to 21.6 percentage on operating revenue, and a Y-o-Y growth of 10.1 percentage. Profit for the period was INR 21.6 crores, which versus the same period last year, resulted in a reduction of 15.9 percentage. It was primarily because of the onetime ETR benefit which we got during last year, because of the Medvantage merger. However, this PAT was equivalent to 11 percentage on the total income. Now giving you the highlights for the full year 2025. Total income for the year was INR 747.1 crores, which was equivalent to a growth of Y-o-Y 14.4 percentage over the previous year. Revenue from the contracts with customers was INR 723.3 crores growing at 14% Y-o-Y. This revenue included 11 percentage from the government business and 5.1 percentage from the international benefits business. EBITDA during the year was INR 154.1 crores, which was equivalent to 21.3 percentage margin on the revenue and a 15.6 percentage Y-o-Y growth over the previous year. PAT profit for the period was INR 91.6 crores, which was equivalent to a 28.5 percentage Y-o-Y growth on the PAT of previous year, and a margin of 12.3 percentage on total income. A few key highlights from the balance sheet as on 31st of March 2025. The total net cash balance in the books, net of borrowings was INR 312.2 crores. Net worth as on date was INR 552.2 crores and the return on net worth was 16.6 percentage. The return on capital employed was 18.7 percentage. Revenue per average head count on the nongovernment business was INR 14.2 lakhs. I now hand over the call to Niraj.

Thank you, Dr. Satish and Sandeep, for giving these highlights. So for the full year, as you can see, we have had a check box on each of the points in terms of growth better than the industry, continuing improvement in profit margins, including EBITDA accretion, and very, very strong cash flow generation we are holding among the highest cash reserves as on date. With this, I would now like to open the call to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Chintan Sheth from Girik Capital.

Congrats for the decent set of numbers and getting the IRDAI approval for Paramount acquisition. Hope, I am audible?

Yes, Chintan, we can hear you.

Sure. So my question is on the initial remark from you Dr., you know that, evolution of our business from TPA to health benefits administrator [indiscernible] we have started getting the inroads -- onboarding two insurers right now. How -- what are the key KPIs, which help us understand the business model for that piece of the business, which is getting involved? And given that investments have been already -- the data has already been in our system, how should one look at the cost trajectory if we scale up this business going forward? Do we see the margins pressurized because of the investments we continue to put in that piece of the business? Help us understand the business better.

Thank you, Chintan. I couldn't get the second part of your question very clearly, but I will -- between all of us will attempt to answer it and let me know if there's anything that you would like us to answer additionally. So yes, first of all, I ratify what you just said that this transition from a pure TPA to a health benefits administrator is real now. And I think that the best way for you and the listeners on this call to think about it is one, that it has allowed us to unbundle our services as an organization. Historically, we have serviced our partners in a single contract that includes all services as governed under a TPA contract. What we have clearly demonstrated is the unbundling of it and strategic opportunities thereof that get created for the business. Illustratively, I talked about two insurers who have worked and now work on our core claims platform called MAtrix. Illustratively, again, I talked about our fraud, waste and abuse with three insurers. And again, illustratively, I talked about 19 insurers and the hospital network. So I would think that the unbundling has allowed us to unlock value, both to our partners, our customers and most importantly, as we organize ourselves as a business, both in India and in the international private medical insurance market, we today don't go in a singular frame, but have the ability to engage, to partner and to contract across frameworks. To the second part of your question, I will ask Niraj to just respond to it.

So Chintan, the second part of the question was, will this transition have an adverse impact on the margin? Is that the correct question that you were asking?

So -- no -- yes. Basically, given that a lot of this unbundling will require a platform to operate separately, and we've been -- as in the past, we have been mentioning that the investments on the resource side, on the tech side has been on the continuous process. So how do we see this investments continuing going forward, in the near-term impacting the margins? And as we scale up and as we ramp up our onboarding of insurers, we'll see the benefits accruing at a later stage of the evolution of moving from TPA to HBA.

So you're right. We've always maintained that we will continue to invest in technology and forward-looking opportunities. So -- but as you can hear from Dr. that we have already seen payouts on these technologies or investments in the form of insurance companies recognizing the value we bring to the table from these investments, and we are truly able to unbundle these services. So -- and also, please note, these are -- we are only building on top of -- most of these services already being captured in our TPA business as a cost aspect. So we do not believe that these investments -- first, there is a proven track record of these investments, we -- our ability to monetize them. And second is they should be far more accretive than the current business because we are leveraging. This is pure form of operating leverage for us, where the same expenses are able to deliver more for us. So that is what we expect in the long term. And I'll bring in Dr., to add one more point.

I think, Chintan, I think a good way to think about this for all of you, is that all the investments were made for the core business that we run today. And that continues to demonstrate data stickiness, greater growth and more insurer participation. What unbundling in a benefits frame allows us to do is to engage with a wider set of stakeholders and customers who are at different stages of evolution of their intrinsic business models. And that a one size fits all is not necessarily the only available contracting template that we have. Thank you for asking us that question, Chintan. Could we go back to the next question?

Sure. Should I chip in one more?

Perhaps, we will come back, Chintan. Should we just cover the rest. Appreciate if you come back.

Our next question comes from the line of Nidhesh Jain from Investec.

Am I audible?

Yes, you are.

Yes, yes. So first question is on retail premium. I think that number is different -- on different -- two different slides. So can you confirm which number is right, retail premium under management? On Slide #5, the retail premium is around INR 2,092 crores, and I think on Slide #13, 14 -- Slide #11, it is around INR 2,341 crores.

So the -- Nidhesh, the INR 2,341 crores is without the adjustment of Raksha premiums on pro rata basis. So that was the reported number on Slide 11 for last year. And the Slide 5 is actually with the footnote that we have mentioned that. We are -- if we allocate on pro-rata basis, Raksha premium in proportion towards consolidated revenues we took for that period, then the number would be slightly lower because we cannot take the full consolidation. It was only 7 months.

Sure, sure. And second question is that you've also spoken about international opportunity. So what is the exact play there? There are business models like Sagility, et cetera. So are we -- do we also see a play in that model where they are offering services to health care providers outside India?

Not at all, Nidhesh, just to make sure that we are all on the same page. I'll take you back in time when we acquired a company called Mayfair We Care. And Mayfair, the whole objective was that as India Inc. globalizes, as Indian insurers globalize, as Indian businesses globalize and the Indian traveler globalizes, there is a need to extend what we do here in India to the global markets, given that Indians and the Indian diaspora are far and wide today. We continue to believe that as the core business continues to grow, we will see an increased participation on the international private medical insurance market, and that we would need to extend these capabilities to other geographies, other networks of hospitals and possibly other global insurance providers. Our focus, although will and continues to remain on India, Indian insurance providers and the offering of Indian health plans with global coverage. I'll stop at that.

Sure. That's very clear. And just lastly, we have been seeing some adoption of health benefit model from the corporates rather taking insurance globally, that is the prevalent model. So how -- is there any trend in India? And if you can share some numbers there, how it is panning out? That would be useful.

Nidhesh, if I understand your question is that is the evolution of a self-financed or a self-funded program relevant in India? It is still in its nascency. We do have certain partners that have migrated to such programs, but I would still share with you that it is still early for us to give you a view or a comment on how and where this will go and at what pace will the uptake be, if any, at all.

Our next question comes from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Spark PMS.

Couple of questions from my end. Premium under management for outsourcing historically was I think 50%, 55% of the TAM. As you know, group is a much larger percentage and retail is a small pie of the addressable TAM for us. So wanted to understand some of the changes in terms of product offerings or taking a more holistic approach, which we are trying to build and not just claim processing. So is it in the background of recent slowdown in the group GDPI segment, which is showing in terms of lower GDPI at 3%, 4% now versus earlier growth? So what is happening in the industry? And what kind of organic revenue growth can we continue to see? And you could give some more insight into how will you have monetization of some of the newer areas which we are trying to focus on, how will it help us adding to revenue or what kind of organic growth that could add? So that could be helpful on the revenue side. I think there was an enabling resolution for fund raise. Any updates on the fund raise? And I couldn't see the dividend payout or dividend this thing at the Board meeting today. So these were my two questions.

Thank you, Prakash. This is Satish. I will attempt answer the first part of your question. So I think Dr. Vikram, when he answered, he clarified. So it's also about unbundling, right? Historically, we required an insurance partner to create the TPA kind of a structure to work with us. And in that TPA model, we delivered all of these services as a completely bundled capability, right, whether it is fraud prevention, whether it is enabling a cashless network, delivering -- reducing inflation and so on and so forth. So one of the things like you said is that the industry, especially between the vintage and the newer insurers are at different stages of evolution and how much they engage with the partners. And increasingly, in the last few years, we have seen various models where insurance companies also look at a mix and match or using the best-of-breed solutions to really deliver policyholder value and improve profitability of the portfolio. So our tech has been built to work independently at a component level. We've been able to make some investments. And today, we are able to deliver, say, just the fraud detection as a stand-alone capability, even though part of the portfolio of claims that we are managing are enabling access to our cashless network even though it's not for a policyholder for whom I'm the TPA. So this is where we've been able to unbundle a lot of the components, and we believe that we are unlocking value for even those insurers, who are currently not in a position to engage in a traditional TPA model. It's not necessarily in reaction to the current growth rates. And coming back to your question on growth. Yes, if you look at the group, there's a substantial part of the group is driven by the employer -- employee segment. And of course, it does reflect a little bit of the slowdown in the underlying employment growth in the formal employment, especially in those segments that offer health insurance, right? It will be unfair for us to say that there is no employment growth, but it is also about the industries, the companies that are actually offering health insurance products. And among those sections, how has the employment growth been, specifically around large benevolent employees like IT IPS. So that's the market reality today. And of course, retail, two reasons why their numbers are little on the lower side. One, the reported churn in the portfolio, especially in the vintage portfolio, given the pricing and the other adjustments. The second, of course, also the -- partly the reporting requirements changed by the regulators of the 1/n for a multiyear policy. We are not impacted by the 1/n because we've always recognized at an annual level. So from an organic and same-store growth perspective, we have always maintained that our growth rates in group and retail will track to or be better than the industry growth rates in the respective segments, and we continue to sort of look at our own growth from that lens.

Okay. So we would continue to outpace industry growth. And any sense of the growth trajectory being continuing because unless and until we don't gain market share, assuming industry remains muted in the near term because of these reasons and macros, so organic growth beyond a point of time are outperforming, the margin would come down. So unless and until industry growth doesn't pick up, organic growth would be difficult to get back to 15%, 18%, which historically we would build. So that is the context I was trying to understand.

Prakash, I would try and answer this in a slightly simplified fashion, maybe oversimplified, but we are handling about 1/5 of the premiums of the industry. There is an 80% that's out there. And in both the models, both the traditional TPA model and also the other models where we believe that we can deliver significant value like we delivered INR 400 crores of savings last year on account of purely preventing frauds. And it's not in the deck, but nearly INR 1,000 crores of discounts and savings from our cashless that we've delivered to our insurance partners. So I think my request would be when you look at our growth, it may or may not be a pure premium and market share kind of a growth. It will be more based on the value that we bring to the ecosystem and how we get remunerated for that.

Right. And anything on the fundraise and dividends?

So on the fund raise, we have always maintained that it was an enabling resolution at the Board, and that is valid for 12 months. We haven't announced any further timing, quantum or usage of that. So as and when there is any development on that, we will update the shareholders and the public at large. In terms of dividend, there is a stated commitment on capital allocation. So in the past, we have consistently rewarded the shareholders in form of dividend. And we continue to be very profitable and cash flow generating. So that intent remains. But at this point, the Board has deferred the decision on whether we will announce dividend and when and how much. We do have another quarter where we can come back with that detail. So at this point of time, we will come back based on how we are able to meet our capital allocation requirements and also the growth investment needs.

No, that's fair. And just to talk to that. I think as you are all aware, it's a great historic moment for us with conclusion and the regulatory consent on Paramount TPA. We are very excited about the partnership and the coming together of the two businesses. And we evaluate that and look at how we need to move forward, we will, as a Board, take a view and we'll get back to all of you over the coming quarter.

Sure. Yes. Lastly, one data keeping point. Would you have the technology spend for FY '25?

Prakash, sir may we request you return to the question queue for the follow-up questions? [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Parimal Mithani from Credential Investments.

Sir, basically, I want to know how do you differentiate between your claim processing and a new unit -- a new entity that you have created, if you can help me understand that will be much better for us, sir. I'm sorry, I'm talking for the first time, if you can help us.

Parimal, the question is not very clear in terms of which entity you're referring to?

No, my point is you migrated from a claim processing to this platform business. And how do you see yourself going ahead? If you can you just help me out understand because I think you've grown by too much of acquisitions and if you can just narrate how it [ propels ] going ahead.

No, I think -- Parimal, this is Satish here. I will attempt to answer your question. Maybe there are two or three things maybe that got mixed in that question. I just want to first clarify. We happen to be the market leaders in the TPA business by a very substantial margin over everybody else. We manage 1/5 of the market in the pure TPA contracting template. And as part of building this scale and coming -- getting to this leadership, we have built significant capabilities, obviously, to operate at this scale at various technology components, that we believe could also be made available independent of TPA contracts to other insurers, right? It's about unbundling the capabilities that we have built. It's not a migration away from one business to the other. It is simply an opportunity to add value to insurers who are currently not actively participating in the TPA template. And secondly, from an acquisitions perspective, I think we've explained this in some of our past calls, all of our acquisitions are very specific from an intent perspective. They're not just only to shore up the top line. We have over -- since 2015, '16, we've acquired four TPAs and there is a fifth TPA approval that we have just received. In those cases, we have acquired a TPA to strengthen our geographic presence, strengthen our relationship with insurers that we didn't have contracts with. Now with Paramount, the objective is to build a truly Pan India platform that insurers can rely on for a seamless service delivery. And in fact, to put that in perspective, Raksha, Medvantage and Mayfair combined was sub-10% across that period, but it is more about the strategic intent and plugging gaps or strengthening our ability to serve.

Our next question comes from the line of Madhukar Ladha from Nuvama Wealth Management Limited.

Just a couple of questions from my side. First, can you give us some sense in terms of a group number of lives covered. Help us get some idea on volume growth, if we can call it that. Second, I also see that the government business and international business has also done better in this quarter. So if you could help us understand what's changing or what's moving over there? And yes, those would be my 2 questions.

I understand, Chintan. Satish here. So historically, we've not necessarily presented the -- sorry, this Madhukar sorry. I've got a [indiscernible] here. Madhukar, apologies for getting your name wrong. Sorry. So lives are hard because the industry does not have uniqueness in the way they report lives, and lives could be duplicated across multiple policies. One of the reasons why we've sort of stayed away from publishing lives or revenue per life kind of a metric. But if you remember some of our earlier conversations, especially in group, we had this rule of thumb that for every INR 100 of same-store growth, historically, 50% came from lives growth, and the other 50% was sort of equally distributed between benefits expansion or an inflation-related correction, right? So that was sort of the rule of thumb. Today, a significant amount of the same-store growth in group for us, has come predominantly from premium and benefits expansion, and very little from the lives growth. While these are not necessarily published from same-store growth from a life expansion perspective, we are seeing possibly about 50% of what it was compared to Q4 of last year. I mean that's just more an approximation, Madhukar just so that you get a sense of where the market is. Retail, of course, for us is we don't track the lives because we work with insurers as a portfolio. Often, the lives growth is also subject to the kind of products in the portfolios we manage and how the underlying products and portfolios are growing because we don't take responsibility for churn in the portfolio that we manage, right? We get the net lives in the retail business. And lastly, on the government and international business. International business, the corporate side, of course, had a little bit of a slowdown from the large IT IPS and similar to the employment slowdown, we did have some of the travel slowdowns. But what has really helped is our recent work that we've done with some of the Indian insurers, especially delivering retail with both global benefits and also travel benefits. We're beginning to see a lot of work sort of coming from there, and we are hopeful that Mayfair will continue to be a growth driver as we continue to integrate into those portfolios. Lastly, on the government side, government, as you know, is an L1 tender process. We've always maintained that given the intensity of work and given a significant focus on performance and steep penalties that NHA actually imposes or the state health authority imposes, it is always imperative for us to participate only in those kind of schemes where we could get remunerated in a manner, we could deliver good quality service. I'm happy to say that increasingly in the government business, there is a focus on the partner's ability to serve and the partner's scale. And a lot of the government business today runs purely on technology. It's cashless, it's electronic. So we do see an opportunity for us to participate more in the government business. Of course, we'll continue to be very opportunistic in what specific schemes we will participate in.

Got it. So if I understand the answer to the first question more correctly, you mentioned that the number of lives or sort of volume growth for you is at about 50% of the volume growth that was there a year ago. Is that what you meant? Is that what you said?

Yes. Directionally that would be fair.

Directionally. And earlier, it would be roughly 50-50. But now it's like 25% and then 75%, which is what is indicated by the slower growth rate in group PUMs as well?

Most likely. And it's also obviously a function of -- yes, obviously, right, the head count is a big function. But I must say that a lot of the corporates are expanding benefits actively. We have seen newer kinds of treatments, newer kinds of benefits, outpatient, flexible benefits sort of coming in into group plans. So that is cushioning a bit. But obviously, nothing beats a continuously growing employment number.

Sorry, just one Madhukar. This is Vikram. Just to support what Satish just said. I think we've seen cycles of such shifts between the left and the right pocket when it comes to the group business. There are periods of employment generation and there are periods of benefits expansion. I think all at best we can collectively read the current frame of reference is that in the recent past period, we have seen expansion of benefits driving a majority of what you've seen as corporate growth. And it does not, in any way, become a litmus or a definition for what will happen in the ensuing quarters. And I'd like you to be aware of that because we've seen cyclicality in expansion and contraction between recruitment and expansion of benefits. And so it's really important to keep that in mind. And it necessarily does not become a trend line. I'll go back to questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of [ Niraj Shah from Perpetuity ].

Am I audible?

Yes, you are.

So my question, as you told us [Technical Difficulty].

Sorry, you're not audible, Niraj. Sorry, Niraj, you're not audible.

Sir, you're still not audible. [Operator Instructions]

Now is it fine? Am I audible?

Yes, sir, please go ahead.

Can we -- Niraj, can we connect offline? I know you guys are Perpetuity. So we can connect offline. Can we move to the next one, Sagar?

The next question comes from the line of Tushar Narwal from AMBIT Capital.

Yes. Am I audible?

Yes.

Actually, I wanted to ask regarding yield. So in 4Q, yield seems to increase both quarterly and yearly basis. If you can tell me what led to this? And what would be the yield going ahead? That's my question.

So are you referring to the group yields, sorry?

Yes, yes, yes.

I think yield for us, I think two or three points to understand from a yield perspective. One, it's also a function of the corporates and the mix in a particular quarter and the service levels and the contracts that we have. So it's not necessarily a constant number because we have, as you're aware, annually renewing contracts. And different contracts renew on different dates within the same year. So it's one, is a mix. The second is in groups, a significant number of groups now offer add-on or top-up products, which are opt-ins for employees, and these are voluntary, and typically not fully priced either from a premium or yield perspective, given the lower workloads in that space. So as more and more groups are offering, more and more employees are opting in. So when you blend the premiums optically, it might look like the yields are contracting, but typically it does result in more revenue per life. Third, we internally track significantly on revenue per life and the cost that we have per life. And for reasons I expanded on earlier, we don't publish the life numbers because the lack of uniqueness at the industry level. So often, yield is a means to the end in terms of what is the right kind of premium because if you have a INR 10,000 premium per life, even a 1% fee on it could be INR 100 of fee per life. And if you have INR 5,000 per life, you need 2% to get to the same fee per life. So I think what I would like to close with, saying our revenue per life kind of way we measure internally has been stable or growing over the years, and that continues to be an important parameter and the way we protect the quality of revenue that we service.

Okay. So do we expect it to grow?

Sorry to interrupt. Tushar, sir, may we request you return to the question queue for any follow-up questions, please? The next question comes from the line of Prithvish Uppal from Elara Securities.

Sir, just wanted to understand once the evolution is happening from a pure TPA to a health benefit administrator, is there any change in terms of the revenue model from how -- if you could just help us understand how are we sort of charging the clients for the fraud detection or the unbundled services? Is it going to be a yield based? Or is it an annuity kind of a SaaS-based revenue model? And what is the kind of opportunity size that you sort of see here in the fraud detection space? And then just post that, just a data keeping question, if you could split the revenue from contract into retail and group as well, that would be useful. So these are my 2 questions.

To sum up, our traditional revenue models, as you are aware, in the TPA business, which is currently still 90% of our revenues, is fee-based revenue as a percentage of premium that has been the preferred historical model. Most of the TPA business continue to be in that model. If you do look at our revenue split, there is a -- if you looked at the government and Mayfair and excluded those, we currently have about 1.5% to 2% of our revenues from technology contracts. These are typically SaaS contracts. In almost in all cases, these are SaaS contracts, either as an API access or on a per transaction basis. And again, as we unbundle some of the capabilities and insurers see value, these pricing models and our contracts structures will evolve, so these are early days. But I think it's best to look at them as a SaaS offering from a technology and a platform perspective in the whole pricing models.

Sure. Understood that. And what is the, typically, the opportunity...

Prithvish, sir, may we request you return to the question for follow-up questions?

Okay. I had a second question that I had asked. So just the split, if you could provide that for between group and retail revenue...

So Prithvish, what we do is we provide premium split. We don't split revenue by the segment. It's overall, we are -- because we don't treat group or retail in terms of servicing very differently, in terms of when a claim comes, it's all centralized operations at the back end. So we don't provide revenue and other detail split by the segments. But premium split is provided.

Next question comes from the line of Chinmay Nema from Prescient Capital.

[Technical Difficulty].

Sorry to interrupt, sir, your line was breaking. Could you please retry? As there is no response from the line of current participant, we'll move on to the next question. Our follow-up question comes from the line of Chintan Sheth from Girik Capital.

[Technical Difficulty] back on books...

Sorry, Chintan sir, your line was not clear initially. Could you please repeat...

I think we understood question. So yes, Chintan, we've had debt on books we've -- in our balance sheet, if you see. Our gross cash that is roughly around INR 460-plus crores. There's also INR 1 crore of working capital OD limit that we have, which we are using for our day-to-day business operation. So what we have reported is on a net cash basis, and the debt is, normal course of business for us in terms of using that capital as we create our reserves for the Paramount acquisition.

Right. Okay. And second is on the contract liability. The closing one, the growth seems, on Y-o-Y basis, a little lower than the business growth we have seen, right? So we are -- that implies slight subdued environment continuing going forward, that's how one should -- because that's the lead indicator that we internally track, right, contract liabilities, just to get a sense of how to look at it.

Chintan, I wouldn't go as far as saying that it is a big lead indicator. I understand what you're asking. But it's a function of the incoming and the outgoing. If it's a slower year, obviously, there will be a net -- the contract liability is different. And also, we had -- it's also a bit of a Raksha extra consolidation impact, so I wouldn't read too much into it at this point.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as a last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Good evening once again. I wanted to thank each one of you for having been on the call with us this evening. It's been an excellent year as a team. We continue to build, partner and grow in the benefits/third-party administration market. They are not mutually exclusive themes, but collaborative themes as a business. I -- on behalf of my colleagues and I, I thank you all for being with us, and you have a good evening. Take care.

On behalf of Medi Assist Healthcare Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.