Saregama India Limited (532163) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhupendra Tiwary from ICICI Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Good evening, everybody. From ICICI Securities, we welcome you to the Q4 FY '21 Results Conference Call of Saregama India Limited. The management is represented by Mr. Vikram Mehra, who is Managing Director; Mr. Vineet Garg, who is CFO; and Mr. B. L. Chandak, who's Executive Director. So without much ado, I give it to Vikram. Over to you, Vikram.

Thank you, Bhupendra. Good afternoon, good evening, everybody, it's 4 already. It's strange taking this call from our homes. So much have changed between the last earnings call we had when I spoke to you people and this one. We genuinely -- I think we all of us believed at that time that the worst of COVID is over and life is slowly coming back to normalcy, but that was not to be. There's been a dramatic change over the last 2 months given what happened in our country, courtesy COVID. And -- I mean, it has its impact, both at the economic level as well as the human level. We can't run away with the all the things that are happening in our country. It's actually happening to somebody who's either a customer of the company or a retailer of the company or an employee of the company. So those things have taken a big toll all across the entire economy. Coming to Saregama, our journey over the last 3 years, practically a journey of preparing the company to take advantage of this global digital explosion that's happening. As more and more people move from the conventional broadcast way of consuming content to digital way of consuming content, we want to -- we always wanted to go back and ride on that phase. This meant that digitization of all our music IP, the 130,000 songs that -- whose IP that we people own, moving everything from an analog format to a digital format, putting all the right metadata behind it. Part number 2, finding these at every leading digital platform in the world. What digital has done is, it has no longer restricted us to the market of India or Southeast Asia or only countries where there are a large amount of Indian population like U.S. or U.K. Courtesy digital, the music is available all across. Anybody who is a fan of Hindi music, and we see that happening. A lot of Raj Kapoor kind of time music or Bachchan sahab [Foreign Language] time of music or Shahrukh Khan [Foreign Language] music actually moved to countries where you don't have too much of Indian population. And that's what we have been able to do by signing up with every major global platform. We have been able to put our music out. We've taken this time to build robust data analytics tool, and this is what differentiates us with every other content company in this country. All other content companies only have a B2B face to it. Our's is the only company which is because of Carvaan has a very strong B2C team also sitting in. Data analytics typically is a domain of B2C companies, people who deal with lot of customer data. We are taking all those learnings and applying it on our music side. When you're sitting on 130,000 of these songs, and you keep on getting 8 billion-odd data points on a regular basis, there's lot of data to play around with. We've taken this time to build digital marketing talent in the company. This was a big question mark everybody had about our company, which was a 115-year-old conventional company, their ability to market content in the digital world. We've taken this time to build that talent and expertise within. And finally, and I think one of the most important parts, we started investing in new content to appeal to the Gen Z and the Gen Alpha. So the younger generation who may not have been exposed to the older music that we people own, to start investing in content that makes sense to them. This is all that has happened over the last 3, 4 years, and the results have started coming. And they look strong, steady and good. If I see the profitability of the current financial year, the year that has gone by, FY '21, it's INR 151 crore. Now there's 2 ways to look at it right now, to say, it is just 1 number that has come out of nowhere. No, there's a slow and steady track that we people have followed to reach this number. Even if out of the INR 151 crore, let me take out the impact of the 2 big factors that happened this year. The other income is huge, and I'll talk about other income later; and the content investments are very, very low because there was no content getting created, courtesy corona lockdown. Even if I take those numbers out, we still are going to be sitting at a pretty good number of INR 100 crores to INR 110 crores, if I take these 2 factors out completely. Now this INR 100 crores, INR 110 crores, it's actually INR 151 crore, I am myself diluting into INR 100 crore, INR 110 crore to take care of the impact of other income and low content investment this year. When compared to financial year '20, we wrote INR 60 crores, which should have been an INR 85 crore to INR 90 crore, had suddenly the Q4 of FY '20 this entire COVID lockdown and the impact on Carvaan not happened, that number would have been INR 85 crore, INR 90 crore. The year before that, we wrote a number of INR 84 crores. So just slow, steady stuff that we people are showing, where our profitability is going up in a steady fashion. And we expect this trend to continue because the pillars that are needed to be put in on the foundation that we people have in terms of music IPs are all in place for us to ride on this digital wave happening in India and abroad. The biggest profitability driver for us over the last few years has been music licensing. If I remove the onetime income we people had in this year, even then we wrote INR 284 crore of top line on music licensing. This is the third straight year of a 20% growth that we people have shown in music licensing business. I've been maintaining with you guys since a long time that we see music licensing to be in a 22% to 25% zone. And even this year, it would have been 22%, 23% had this public performance revenue that we typically get from society not become 0. Clearly, with no events being allowed by government, no parties are happening, so we could not generate revenue there. So there was an hit from 2 of our societies because of that. Otherwise, I think we should have been in a 22%, 23% kind of a zone. But the key part is, even with COVID, even with the quarter 1 when the numbers of everybody globally in music business had taken a hit, in spite of that, we came out end of the year right now at a 20% growth on the music licensing business. As we move forward, we see no reason why we should not be able to maintain and sustain this 22% to 25% growth in music licensing, primarily on back of new music. We will be our -- all the upside that we could have got right now, efficiency is already in, we believe as we keep on investing more and more in new content, that is what's going to give us the lift. Our publicly stated standards that we plan that -- to acquire between 20% to 25% of all music that goes out in the market, we want to acquire that out, which can be across languages, across genres, I'll talk about it later, but that's what our intent is. Since the investment in new music is going to become substantial as we go forward, we have from this quarter onwards started sharing with you our content charge for every quarter, so that you clearly can see how much of the total cost that we people have, of that how much is the investment which is going into content and content investment is the investment in future. What does this -- this number was INR 8 crore for Q4 compared to that of Q3, this number was INR 4 crore. What does this content charge include is important to understand. There are 2 kinds of ways in which we buy music. There are ways -- there are times when we buy music based -- on the basis of royalty after paying a huge minimum guarantee. This minimum guarantee gets amortized over 6 years. We -- till the time this minimum guarantee is not amortized, the amortization part is what gets loaded onto the content charge. The second way is when we buy content on an outright basis, where there is no royalty, we just pay a fixed fee and that's onetime payment. In that case, the amortization of that fixed fee over 6 years gets included here. And third, all marketing expenses that we're incurring, all the -- when we launch new content, the entire marketing expense is part of content charge. What content charge is not going to be having, is the loyalty that the people pay on older content. Once the minimum guarantee is recovered in 6 years -- is amortized in 6 years, after that, if we ever pay royalty, all that will not be included here. So it is -- content charge, in the genuine sense of it, is a reflection of the money that we people are spending on newer content only. The second big driver for us has been the efficiency that we are able to build in the system. All the investments that are needed to streamline a music business has already been put. The investment that needed to go out there in the -- on the software side. There was a large amount of manpower investment we had done to move things from analog to digital, all that is already in place. And same is the case with our movie business. The initial investment that we had to do to go up the learning curve have all being incurred. And that's the reason slowly we people have started reaping the dividends for it. If you see overall, our operating income before content charge, interest and depreciation has almost doubled this year. And it's all coming out of the reasons -- because of the reasons I stated earlier. Even if I see this operating income before content charge, interest and depreciation in terms of the percentage of revenue, we have doubled there also. Though I will confess, there also a big role is played by the mix because the Carvaan share has come down and the music licensing numbers have gone up. Music licensing business by the very nature is a higher profitability business. Hence, with the mix changing, the percentage is looking pretty decent. We are now in the -- for the last [ 3 ] quarters, we are hovering around 33%, is our operating income -- 33% is the operating income before revenue, depreciation and interest of the revenue. Our focus on cash management continues, improving collections and postponing all nonessential expenses. With very little content getting released this year, our content investments are also very low. So this year, as I stated on last call, we not only got debt -- completely debt free, we end up having a cash surplus of INR 170 crores at a consolidated level. Some INR 34.8 crore out of that has already been earmarked for dividend. But it's a big change for a company that used to be in debt in the near back. Now let me get into more specifics about the quarter 4, this specific quarter that has gone by. If you look at the revenue, there is -- immediately the thing that is hit, that the revenue has fallen down from INR 134 crore in quarter 3 to INR 123 crore in quarter 4, around INR 11 crores of reduction. Actually, the moment you start looking at the details more, you realize that it's actually not a fall in quarter 4. Quarter 3, conventionally right now is always a much higher revenue quarter. If you go back to a quarter 2 revenue, it was INR 108 crore, which shot up to INR 134 crore in quarter 3 because of 2 reasons which happens every year: The Diwali factor comes in, so Carvaan sales starts going up; second, the way our deals are structured, majority of our overflows come during that time. So suddenly, it's a phasing issue that starts happening because of which quarter 3 starts looking higher. So quarter 2, sudden jump in quarter 3, then we come back to a normalcy in quarter 4. If you go to financial year '20, same thing had happened. Our quarter 3 revenue was INR 129 crore, quarter 4 was INR 108 crore. What's the good part is, both the quarters have seen improvement right now in terms of the overall revenues we are writing. So quarter 4 revenue is not a reduction, it's just a phasing issue. You're going to -- you can expect something similar happening in the financial year '22 also. In this quarter, big changes, the other income have been substantial, and this is cash income, primarily coming out of 2 factors: dividend that we people received from our investments in CESC and the interest income we people got on IT refund that we received in this quarter. These are the 2 factors right now which ended up contributing to substantially high cash [ other ] income. Two years back, we had shared with you guys our plans to invest very heavily in new music because we wanted to keep our catalog relevant even 30 years down the line. Unfortunately, COVID had happened and all new film releases started getting postponed. So we could not acquire and release much of music over the first 9 months of this year, which meant right now that both content and marketing costs were looking very, very low over the last 9 months. Last quarter was a little better. We've ended up doing multiple nonfilm launches in Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bhojpuri. There are some big names like B Praak and Jaani, with whom we ended up launching singers. It has given us a good boost, both through our OTT numbers and our YouTube numbers. And it's starting the initial process of putting energy back into our catalog. But I'm happy to share right now, so if I look at the last 12 months, 12 months back, our play in Gujarati was 0. We were a nonplayer in Gujarati. As I talk to you, well, we're within the top 3 in Gujarati. We -- a year back, we were 0 in Bhojpuri. We had no play in Bhojpuri. We already are now clocking 400 million views on YouTube on an annual basis in Bhojpuri. Our entire focus is that we will choose our languages and then start getting into a leadership position there. And both these languages, Gujarati and Bhojpuri, is growing as per the plan. The other -- and -- which is the real big thing is on the Hindi side, where film music is what calls the shots. Some of you may have seen our press releases. I'm happy to share right now that some of the biggest Bollywood producers have gone back and assigned their music to Saregama. So the ultimate director of Bollywood, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, his next move -- his next to next directorial movie, both these movies, Gangubai Kathiawadi, and the next movie Sanjay Leela Bhansali will be directing, music of both of them already belongs to Saregama. He also plans to launch a nonfilm music album, that also belongs to Saregama. So all the music that's going to come out of SLB Productions for the next 2 to 3 years belongs to Saregama. In South India, there is a superstar director called Shankar. He -- most of the Rajinikanth films are all directed by him. He also dabbled in the past in Hindi. He wants to do a Hindi remake of one of his superhit Tamil films, Ranveer Singh is the hero. It's supposed to be another one of the big movies, and music of that has already been acquired by Saregama. Add to this, Akshay's next movie, Bell Bottom; Ajay Devgn's next movie, Maidaan; and many other movies, including an Ayushmann Khurrana movie, the music has already being bought by us. So this year, some of us may have had like that will -- when we go back into large films music acquisition, will we be successful or not? I think that should be put to rest because some of the biggest movies are coming across to us. Are we paying more than what the market is paying? No, we are not. Why is the content coming across to us? It's the reputation of Saregama being upfront and honest in terms of paying up all the royalties, and it's our reputation of being a marketing-driven company. And many of the movie producers want to tie up with companies who are marketing savvy because if company like us market music better, the films become bigger. And the success of Carvaan has proved to people that this is a digital marketing savvy company. In terms of revenue, the biggest driver, as I mentioned earlier, continues to be digital licensing business that we people have. As more and more of our content consumption goes up, higher the revenues that we end up making. During the quarter, we people signed a new deal with the short-format video app called Triller. We already have similar deals going on with Instagram, Dailyhunt, Josh and Moj. We also, during this quarter, ended up giving licenses of our songs to multiple shows and movies on Netflix, like The Big Day, Mismatched, movie like Roohi, and also to Amazon for Toofan. Similarly, many brands like Marico or Berger or Dabur, Limca, Blue Star, all of them ended up taking license for our music to prove -- to use our music in their advertising. I've been constantly sharing with you guys these names every quarter what's happening just to tell you that the use of retro music in advertising, in series, and these are digital web series that we're talking about, is going up substantial. And why -- and what is all this resulting into? Is the growth rate that we are talking of, which is upwards of 20%, it's coming because of what? It's coming because of industry's growing around 11-ish -- 11%, 10%-11%, 11%-12% kind of a range. The remaining growth is coming because there's a market share growth for us, which is coming because retro music is getting more and more popular, and we've started investing in new music. I can't speak enough about the fact that the popularity of retro music is not a sudden part which has happened. Nobody can question the evergreen nature of the music, which was created in 50s and 60s and 70s, but somewhere that was no longer top of mind. Carvaan has gone out there and put that music top of mind for everyone. Suddenly, the popularity -- with the popularity of Carvaan also what's helping us is that when we go to digital platforms, most of the content curator on a digital platform are these young 23, 24-year-old kids. For us to prove to them that retro music is very popular was always a question mark because they did not know that much about a song that was released in 1960s. With popularity of Carvaan, and when they are consuming Carvaan in their home because their dad and mom have bought it, and when we go back to the data of Carvaan, it becomes easier for us to get right visibility for retro content on these digital platforms. During the -- as the retail network opened up, starting from Q3 onwards, I'd say, retail network was coming up to some kind of a normalcy. We saw Carvaan numbers going up. This is in spite of any marketing spend being put in there. We are working on a minimal level. Q3 was 138,000 Carvaan. Q4 was 110,000 Carvaan, which could have been higher had the last 15 days of March not gone wasted once again because of COVID. Corporate sales were completely gone away. Typically, March is a large corporate sales month for us. It did get affected. But if you ask me, I'm still comfortable with the numbers that we people have been able to do because it shows you that this is the amount of pull Carvaan still has in the market in spite of no marketing support being given out there to that product. Our commitment to all the investors and our Board continues that till the time we don't have complete comfort on opening up of the retail market, we will keep a very tight control on the Carvaan cost structures, both on the marketing and the manpower so that we are able -- there are no losses being incurred on Carvaan. I had committed to you, we have lived up to it, Carvaan has done a breakeven in this particular year. And we believe right now that may become -- that will also be the trend that may happen in financial year '22. Overall, I'm -- financial year '22, I believe for Carvaan may be marginally better than financial year '21. But quarter 1, maybe pretty -- retail networks are all still fully shut, all the e-commerce companies are not delivering nonessential items like Carvaan. So we are struggling at this moment in this quarter. But accordingly, the phasing issue, what we saw earlier, if this quarter there's not enough happening right now, the pent-up demand is going to come out and quarter 2 or quarter 3 will become that much better. Our movement right now to take Carvaan from a onetime margin product to an ongoing revenue-making platform, that focus, every quarter I tell you, is not going to go away. We are convinced about it. We believe in it. We are seeing the share of the Carvaan 2.0, which is the platform Carvaan with the return part, the share of those numbers going up. The overall Carvaan numbers are not very high. So business-wise Carvaan 2.0 is also doing pretty well, and the podcasting content is performing very, very well. I'm very bullish on the way podcasts are doing. If I look at some of the biggest global platforms, there is an Apple or a Spotify, you will see that raising popularity of podcast. We believe as our Carvaan platform numbers start going up, there will be that much higher consumption of podcasting done by these 35, 40-year-old people who use Carvaan. And as that happens, the -- there's a possibility of advertising revenue coming in. TV and films. Quarter 1, end of quarter 1, when we had written a loss on this. Even in quarter 2, we're in difficult position. I had committed to you guys, but it's a phasing issue. Because there was a complete lockdown, we could not shoot anything in Q1, we could not release anything in Q1. But as the market started opening up, we were one of the first guys off the block. We were literally the first guys in Sun TV who got our serials back. Similarly, we were the first guys who started shooting films in the month of July itself. And Q3, Q4 became that much better. Q4 numbers look good right now for films and television. On an overall year basis, right now, we are back to a breakeven state. On Sun TV, all 3 serials of ours are doing pretty well, both in terms of TRPs and revenue. The good part is -- so yes, a serial like Roja continues to be the leading #1 serial on Sun TV and between #1 and #2 serial on all Tamil channels for the entire year, which is great stuff. Performing the bigger part is, I keep on saying -- harping every time on the power of IP. We have now started seeing -- even for the content that we are creating for Sun TV, which we own over 6,000 hours of the content, the value of that IP has now started coming out in different ways. We started putting out all the content that we create for Sun TV; after it's put on the channel, we've started loading it on YouTube. It was a trickle. It was not that important a thing till a year back. This year, we've already seen 1.5 billion views that have come on YouTube of this content, which first is aired on Sun TV channels and then is put up right now on Saregama YouTube channel. In last quarter alone, we are looking at over 570 million views coming out of our YouTube channels on these TV serials. We've -- all this is additional revenue, which were not planned earlier. We're now putting up this content on other platforms like Facebook. I believe in the days to come, there'll be more opportunities to monetize this IP. That's the beauty of IP. You create it once, you write-off the entire cost of the IP and then you keep on making more and more money off it right in the days to come. On the film side, we started shoot of a film, Collar Bomb, with Jimmy Shergill in quarter 3, and we were able to license the film out in the fourth quarter. In this quarter, we also -- our movie -- till now, all our films were getting license for digital platform. With KD, which incidentally won the National Film Award, in quarter 4; with our film KD, we've not only licensed it to a digital platform, we've also been able to license it to a TV channel. So one more source of avenue has been opened up for the content we're creating on our Yoodlee. We completed the shoot of a film, Zombivli, and will released sometime later this year. And on -- specifically on Yoodlee, I look forward to financial year '22 as the next big jump. So our Phase 1 was to establish ourselves. The moment we did that we stopped taking losses, which is the first year for the loss time. Second year onwards, right now, we started getting into a marginal profits. If I take out the lockdown impact of last year, Yoodlee would have made profits in '21 also. But the big jump of scaling it up is going to happen in financial year '22. Especially, we should be able to share very soon with you web series mandates that we should be getting at least one of them from a leading platform. That will straight away put us in a big league, both in terms of top line and bottom line. The concern in Q1, both on the films and TV side remains lockdowns. Maharashtra, where [indiscernible] where most of the Yoodlee shoot did happen, there's a complete lockdown. Tamil Nadu has now gone under lockdown. So TV serials have become a problem. So this may create some kind of an impact out there in the short run on Q1 numbers. But overall, with the moment we start looking at the entire year, we're quite bullish on films and television, too. All in all, financial year '21 was a very eventful year, which, very importantly, has been able to establish a causal effect relationship, not a high correlation alone, a causal effect relationship between the success of an IP-owning company and increase in digital consumption. As more people started moving towards the digital consumption during COVID sitting at their home, higher is the consumption rate that we have seen of a company like ours, both on the music side as well as on the film side. That will be all gentlemen and ladies. Happy to field questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Pradeep Pandey from SBI Mutual Fund.

[Audio Gap] question is, so in line with the innovation happening in the West, where they are selling NFTs...

Sorry, I could not -- can you please repeat it because you were not audible in the beginning.

All the digital assets or all the intellectual property rights which they have and creating revenue out of it by selling some of the iconic rights they have.

Sorry, I could not -- can you please repeat your question because you -- it was not very audible. I'm so sorry.

Yes. So in line with the -- what's happening in the West, where there's sale of NFTs and digital tokens or some of the digital assets in form -- and monetizing those digital assets, has the company ever decided to monetize some of the intellectual assets it has? That's number 1. And number 2, probably, has the company thought of using blockchain or any of the new trends which are emerging on digital side?

So are we exploring and looking at the NFTs in a very serious fashion for the newer content? Yes. We are fine -- we are checking out what all is actually happening. See, there are 2 things. One is just marketing stunts that are carried out. Other is genuine revenue getting done out of NFTs connected to new music. We -- up till now, is there been any major stuff that can be looked at -- that revenue spinner that can be done using NFTs in that sense? No, it's more for merchandising. We are exploring it up. I'm not going to -- I'm not committing to you, when are we going to work around it. But globally, Universal, Sony, Warner, the 3 of the biggest companies, we're watching very closely as to what are those guys doing in this space. The bigger trend globally at this moment has been the increase in the value of the publishing rights of songs. If you follow both -- all the 3 companies and some of the funds are buying the publishing rights of some of the biggest artists at some crazy astronomical prices. In India -- unlike West, in India, companies like Saregama own both sound recording as well as publishing rights of all the songs that we people have. So we believe that the valuation -- as valuation of international content starts going up, something similar may happen in India, too.

The next question is from the line of Sidhant Mattha from B&K Securities.

Vikram, so basically 2 questions. First of all -- so basically, we've seen Maharashtra, Goa and right now Karnataka also suspending television shooting. So has that been seen in Tamil Nadu also?

Yes. Tamil Nadu now shoots from -- in fact, from this week onwards it has become a problem. So we still have a ban...

Okay. So that's for 2 weeks till 24th of May because I think since the lockdown is till 24th of May.

If it's only 2 weeks, it actually doesn't affect because we typically have those kind of banks with us. We bank that many number of episodes. But if it starts getting longer than that right now, then it will create some amount of pressure.

So currently -- like currently on the ground, shooting is not happening?

Currently, on the ground, shooting, unless you're going out there and managing at some...

So basically -- like basically your serials like Roja and [ that Anbe Vaa ] and all that things, so...

At this moment, the production of these serials is taking a hault. We are very, very hopeful right now that this lockdown is going to be relatively short term, and business should not get affected because we have bank of episodes sitting with us. So by the time, the bank is exhausted, we should be back in business shooting it. For if whatever reason the lockdown becomes longer, then it may impact. If you look at last time, last time also entire quarter was ruled out. There were no shoots that we had done. And new episodes started coming only from July end onwards.

Yes, that I know. So basically, currently, are we -- or you have only 3 daily soap shows which are [Technical Difficulty] no other language, no other channel, nothing else?

No, no. So ours -- we are very, very clear, we work only with Sun TV. And our primary work right now is all happening on -- in the space of Tamil.

Okay. Yes. And second question, so basically -- because we're seeing the second wave happening and all the film releases getting delayed. Bell Bottom, which was scheduled for 28th May will also get delayed because of this pandemic. So do you negotiate the contracts if movie releases on OTT? Because we've seen if a movie releases in a theater and the movie releases on OTT, the music is more -- like the music -- what happens is when a movie is releasing in theater, the music is more -- those -- [Foreign Language] it is more widely available compared to an OTT platform. So you would negotiate contracts with movies like Bell Bottom, and et cetera, movies like Sanjay Leela Bhansali if they release on OTT?

Okay. Let me answer. All our contracts, which have been done over the last 18 months, which includes every big film that I spoke to you about, has a clause that gives us protection. It's only for this year.

Yes. Because OTT gives -- comparatively, it does not give a wider audience. That's why we just...

No, no, you are right. See, in response to that, I can tell you, if you see the way Salman's latest movie music is doing, Radhe, it's doing pretty well on each of the platforms. It's with [indiscernible] Radhe is doing very, very well despite the movie not taking a theatrical release. But I agree with the point that you raised that the valuation cannot be the same if the movie gets released in theater versus going directly in digital. So we have protection in each of our contracts.

Okay. And how is this environment changing? So we have seen from the last -- there were albums, which used to come like -- of your competitors like T-Series and all. There were albums which used to come, something like Guru Randhawa, all these albums. Now we are seeing because there are no movies which are getting released, so more of albums are coming rather than these movie songs and we're seeing big, big actors also doing albums. So are we getting -- are we focusing on these albums or not?

Yes. So when you say album, you actually mean nonfilm song. [Foreign Language] nonfilm song, so during this quarter, we people launched one of the biggest named combination from Punjab, the combination of B Praak and Jaani. We launched a song of his. We launched another song right now with Alaya, Pooja Bedi's daughter. Alaya Furniturewalla appeared in another song of ours. These are all nonfilm songs that we're -- I'm talking to you about. There were 2 other -- 3 other songs that were released, these are all nonfilm. So till quarter 3, we were not doing any of the work in the nonfilm Hindi space. I had shared last time also, we are now proactively and aggressively into the nonfilm Hindi space also. We always have been in the nonfilm space in Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi, we are doing it in Hindi, too.

Okay. Okay. And just last question. Just wanted to know, how does the customer see a nonalbum -- or album song or nonfilm song and a film song? Is there any data points? Or is there any poll suggesting that new -- film songs are like heard more than album songs or something?

The big difference is -- typically, the big difference is that all film songs typically carry a big star cast. Not all nonfilm songs typically end up having big Bollywood actors. There is a far and few in between. Also, there are times that singer himself or herself appears in the song. So that makes a difference. That you are hearing the song because Amitabh Bachchan is in it or you're hearing the song because Kishore Kumar sung it. You're hearing the song because Ranbir Kapoor is in it or because Arijit Singh has sung. So that's a difference between a film and nonfilm, both have their own dynamics. When a Bollywood star-based song comes out, the hype of the film itself is that much that it ends up getting a massive initial traction on the song. If you are doing a nonfilm song, you have to build that traction. But producing a nonfilm song is cheaper, but it needs higher marketing.

The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Credence Wealth.

Vikram and team, congratulations on a good set of numbers. So Vikram, my first question is, in last about more than 1.5 years or 5, 6 quarters, we have been maintaining that we look to acquire about 20% of the new film content. And that has been very transparently given in your presentations each quarter. I found a slight change in the presentation in this quarter, where we have mentioned the figure could be 20% to 25%. So is it that since probably the last 1 year not -- content has not been acquired or content has not been available, so -- or maybe those releases have not happened, thereby this figure is going up? Or are you trying to become more aggressive given the fantastic cash flows which you have generated in FY '21?

Rahul, it's part 2.

It is part 2?

Yes. We are getting more aggressive. We are seeing that whatever we have invested in is giving us good ROI. We believe we are in a position to monetize this content better than most of the guys are able to do because of the shear size. In our business, size matters a lot. And size is helping us monetize this content far better, that's why we are planning to be more aggressive, compared to 20%, we're looking at 20% to 25%.

[Foreign Language] to be spent in 3 years somewhere around, probably, I feel, and correct me if I'm wrong, those probably can [Technical Difficulty] next, say, 18 to 24 months. Is that the way to look at it?

Yes. [Foreign Language] broadly speaking, right now, yes. Maybe shorter, but what is the commitment that we are making is that it will all be funded by our internal cash flows. We are not raising debt to fund this ambition. We believe that the year that we start moving a car, in the first year -- first few months when the car is still in the first gear, the -- it still requires some amount of funding from our side. And after that, it will become a self-funding issue. And the results from this year right now are there for you to see. With Carvaan at almost a breakeven -- Carvaan is a breakeven, Films & Television are the breakeven. It's practically music licensing, which is done everything this year. You look at the numbers, remove these other income, and then look at the numbers, and that will tell you right now, what kind of cash flows is that existing music licensing business able to generate.

Sure. That's helpful. And Vikram, in this current year, flat -- good number of licensing deals with some of the large guys, including Spotify, Facebook and then some of this video chats like ShareChat and Moj and all of others. And also, you have been talking about new avenues like digital series, whether on Netflix or Hotstar, which are using Saregama lyrics and songs. And you also have been transparently talking about various companies, including Marico [ and all that, ] their advertisements use Saregama songs. So how -- so this is the first year where you had some of these fairly large deals and also this retro has contributed as what you've been mentioning in last quarters. So how currently large this thing has become, including this deal with Spotify [Foreign Language] I'm not asking for a specific number, but how big this is? And what could be the potential which you could see in next 2, 3 years this becoming? So let's assume if today that is x, do you feel that, that can be how much x in the next 2 years or 3 years to come?

See, let me put it this way, the biggest source of revenue that we people have in India and globally is audio streaming, not just for us, globally for every music playbook. This is where the revenue that we end up getting from a Gaana or a Spotify or Bing or an Amazon or an Apple. Our belief is that there is still a massive amount of upside, which is available on that space, both in terms of new users coming in and using these services and number of songs they listen to every month. This number has been steadily growing year after year after year after year. This year in a continuation the number is going up, and we still have just touched the top -- the surface of it. Second, there's a huge potential upside available for all of us the day these streaming platforms turn pay. World over, there are 450 million subscribers which -- paid subscribers between all these streaming applications. If I take Spotify and I take Apple and then I take the Chinese apps, so in India, that number is not even 1% of it. We believe there's a huge upside available and the moment more and more of these platforms turn pay, the share that we will make out of their platform will go up substantially compared to what we people are making today. So there are multiple forces that may be at play, which is going to help us more users coming in, more amount of content that they end up consuming, plus instead of free, the app starts focusing on the paid side. Three ways in which there is a potential -- upside potential on the music streaming side. YouTube continues to grow leaps and bounds, and we are seeing the same numbers coming in. It's growing at a substantial fiery pace. Those are making -- and what has happened is YouTube again is dependent on 2 things, more amount of videos being viewed and more advertising coming behind the video. If you're tracking media, the amount of advertising money is increasing more and more and coming out there to the digital world and moving away from the conventional television world. As more money starts following, the advertising money starts following the content, our share starts going up. Because remember, we make 55% of whatever YouTube is making by selling a spot on our video. So there is a large amount of upside sitting on that front, too. Third comes video sharing. Till 1 year back, we did not even know their names. We just knew 1 name, which has been banned in India now, TikTok. Rest of the guys have all come in the last 1 year, and they are showing -- you can independently monitor. They're showing a serious growth in India. We believe right now, there is still large amount of content consumption upside, which is available on -- in free AVOD platforms or paid subscription SVOD platforms. And whichever way the growth numbers come in right now because the content actually is owned by us, we'll be in a position to improve our revenues.

So just a related stuff because we have always been talking about the subscription...

Sir, I would request you to rejoin the queue for follow-up questions.

Ma'am, it's just a related question for what he has spoken. So Vikram, this is -- with regards to the subscription revenues, you have always maintained, at present, when most of the guys in India are using the streaming apps without any subscription or those are being used free, then you get revenues based on a song being played or some share of the advertisement. But your revenues can really see a sharp jump when a subscription kind of model gets developed. So in last 3 quarters, have you seen or have you been able to gather that subscription revenues of some of these streaming apps are going up and have started downloading?

No. Has all your subscription taken off in India? No, not yet. And this is something that everybody has his own belief. I look at only 3 data points. One, world over, it moved here to 450 million. In India, the movement, some of the big Indian players start focusing on their bottom line, they will have to go back [indiscernible] If people are paying it world over, why will they not pay in India? It's just that if you provide all the content free, hence people don't see any reason for them to pay it. If I -- second data point, if I see the growth of video platforms during the lockdown, the numbers that are coming right now from the Hotstar or a Netflix or an Amazon or a ZEE5, where they've consciously taken a call to put content and paywall you see growth in number that they are seeing. That tells you right now that there's every reason to believe that the moment platform decides that they are not interested in increasing monthly active users, but want to drive subscription, subscription services are going to start happening. And that time is not very far away. How long can you keep on staying on valuation? You have to look at bottom line. And these streaming platforms will also do the same.

The next question is from the line of Amit from 2Point2 Capital.

Congratulations on great set of numbers. So just a question on the licensing revenue incremental margins. So what is the typical royalty that -- percentage that you have to pay on the legacy music that you own, the 90s, 80s, 70s music? So what's the royalties that you still need to pay every year on...

Those numbers are between 10% to 15%.

Okay. Okay. And but if you look at now, see, your licensing revenues over the last 2 years have gone up almost 50% from less than INR 200 crores to almost INR 300 crores, but your royalty expense has pretty much stayed flat for the 2 years. So what explains that?

Vineet, can you take that question because it's a hedge that he's talking about here?

What I'm referring to is in FY '21, the royalty expense is around INR 56 crores; in FY '19, it was around INR 55 crores. So that's a very small increase. But in that same period, your licensing revenues have gone up 50%. So why haven't royalty expense kept pace with licensing both.

No. So royalty expenses actually includes the cost of the -- as Vikram explained, when you purchase the new content and amortize that, that also is presently charged off as a royalty cost. Because they have not launched any new content in last 1 year, so whatever -- the charging for the new content is substantially reducing. What has happened is, whatever the content we released in the last 1 year is purchased outright, right? So in that case, it is not being charged to royalty, it is charged to amortization below the line in depreciation. So that is the reason it looks like flat.

Okay. So understood. So next year or 2 years down the line, once again, once content acquisition increases, this number will again start increasing?

No, no, no. Hold on right now. [Foreign Language] royalty is also paid on Carvaan. Content that you are putting inside Carvaan also lends itself to royalty payments. The Carvaan sales have gone down, so you can't link royalty expense only and only to music licensing revenue, but there is a Carvaan angle also to it. That's one. Your second part. As more and more content is bought by us, in fact, it will not be hitting the royalty, it will be hitting the amortization part. Because the way -- I explained to you, majority of the way in which we buy the content is, if we buy a new movie, I give them a large minimum guarantee advance. And once I have recouped it over the n number of years, then I start paying a royalty.

Got it. This is quite helpful. Second question, on licensing revenue growth is 20%. And in fact, it has almost doubled over the last 3 years. So what is the growth in digital licensing revenue? Because I'm assuming there will be some parts of the licensing revenue, which haven't grown over the last few years?

So see, what -- if you see our corporate presentation, it will give you how -- which are the various ways in which we make revenues in music licensing. [ Primarily in ] music streaming, which is your audio streaming apps, they are growing substantial. YouTube growing substantial. These new video sharing app, which is a recent phenomena, including the Facebook those are coming in, which is all sitting in this financial year, there is a very good growth coming in here. The fourth is the licenses we issued to TV channels. Now that, it has been growing, but the [indiscernible] how long will TV channels be able to handle the onslaught of digital consumption. So let's see there -- our dependence on them is low because we anyway don't make too much money from them, we're making more money from the digital side. But that's the part right now, let's see, what the future has got there for us. There is a question mark. If the TV channels are not going to make that much amount of money, they can't see large amount of license fee with us.

So basically, then your 20%, 25% long-term licensing revenue growth guidance, that will be driven by digital licensing maybe growing even faster than 25%, while some other segments not doing as well.

Yes. But remember there, the majority of our revenue is coming from digital. That means on -- because they are not -- apart from television channels, the only other thing right now which I can call nondigital, if you want to, is when a brand takes a license from you. But I can tell you, there are brands taking license for running their ads only on YouTube. If I include that also digital, then practically, everything is becoming digital apart from TV channels?

So are these song -- the competitions that happen on TV channels, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs and all of that?

See that's the only part which is nondigital in that sense. But there's also what's happening, each of the TV channel now when they're clearing a license for a show, they also want to clear the license for the same show on the digital app because we have now smartly gone out there and cut the -- and made these as 2 different tariff plans. So the moment they come to digital -- and in digital, the other part we are doing -- and television business is legacy business. The way Saregama used to function and we are still functioning is fixed fee. In digital, we have started using -- charging people on per usage basis. It was a new world, we could change the rules that we wanted to do. And we've taken lead in this and we are taking more and more pay as you use, which allows me to monitor my content product.

The next question is from the line of [ Ankit from Bamboo Capital ].

Yes. Congratulations for a great year for results and very good cash flows. Vikram, on this streaming part, the way that the revenues are growing, that has been phenomenal, the licensing part is what I'm talking about. So I wanted to understand how the margins are shaping up for this segment? Because in earlier con calls, you had stated this is a very high-margin generating segment for us, and the margins are as high as 55%, 60%. So how are the margins shaping up for this segment and how do you see the margins to be when -- be such, let's say, somewhere around INR 500 crores kind of revenue over the next 3, 4 years, if this continue growing at 20%, 25%? How will operating leverage kick in, in this segment?

Firstly, I don't think anything. To call, I would have gone out and said 55% and 60% number. But yes, directionally you're right, this is a high-margin business, especially on legacy content, because the only cost we have of processing legacy content is some amount of -- there's a royalty cost. There is some amount of marketing cost to keep that music and those artists of that era, whether it's a Kishore Kumar or an R.D. Burman, keep legacy alive by doing various kinds of events around them. So those 2 and some amount of manpower cost is the only cost that we people have to maintain legacy business. And the profitability of that actually is not very difficult for you to do. This year [indiscernible] you can check everything of ours. I have already told you out of the 4 businesses, we're breakeven. So you know where the profitability is coming from. You know exactly what is the top line of music licensing business that -- and there is a very little content investment and how much of content investment, we have also shared in our presentation. So you exactly know what profitability are the people working out on a legacy business of ours. The new business that we people are coming in, we have already told you what our amortization policy is. So the -- so let's go with logic, right? The new content that comes out of the market every year between INR 500 to INR 600 crores. We are seeing we want 20% to 35% share of that content. That tells me how much are we intending to invest. If you have our amortization policy clear, you can go back and apply that. Revenue will continue growing anything between 22% to 25% because of the new content that we're getting. My initial growth that came was coming more out of efficiencies by ensuring I'm available on every platform [indiscernible] can be. Now we expect right now more and more growth will keep on coming out of the newer content. That's why we're very confident and still projecting a 22% to 25% growth, while the industry in India is growing at 11%.

So just going back again to my question. Let's say, the older content, the consumption keeps on increasing, is it possible that -- let's leave aside the new content acquisition part, that's a different line item. But on the existing revenue, will it be possible to get further operating leverage from here on if we reach, let's say, INR 450 crore, INR 500 crore kind of revenues over the next 2, 3 years or earlier?

Sir, in this -- I'm still not very sure what exactly you want to know. Older content for us is -- the revenue for that content is also growing year-on-year. There are -- if I take any song of R.D. Burman, it has made more -- more people have heard it in financial year '21 than '20 to '19 [Foreign Language]. We track every song every year, every month, their performance. So is the catalog making more money for us today than it was making in the past? Yes. And that you're seeing right now. Revenue is all coming out of catalog. Our newer content investment is not that high over the last 2, 3 years. So if we decide -- as a company, if we go back and decide, we will not invest in new content at all and for the time being, right, the other businesses are just doing a breakeven [Technical Difficulty], we can sustain the current things, right? There is no amortization expense that's going to be coming in. You reduce the growth rate from 20% to 25% right now to closer to the industry growth, it is slightly higher than the industry growth, and you have the number.

Yes. Got it. Okay, okay, that was very helpful. Second question, Vikram, more on how Yoodlee will shape out over the long -- medium to long term? The way we have seen the explosion of OTT apps over the past 1 year or even prior to that also, we were seeing the kind of explosion, which has happened, especially on the -- on the series side. So over the next 3 to 5 years, how do you see Yoodlee will shape out? And what will be the margins in this payment in medium to long term?

So, Yoodlee, we are expecting over 3 to 5 years of steady growth trend of between 15% to 20% year-on-year. I will be even -- maybe give you even better numbers right now end of financial year '22. I want to see some of it, because even if I have managed to launch something, till the time we are not able to shoot it, it's all of the negative [Technical Difficulty]. So -- but you can very easily take a number, a growth pattern right now in 3 to 5 years of 15% to 20%. And this business for us -- remember, in the case of Yoodlee, the entire cost is amortized in a single shot. The moment we write our first digital revenue, we charge off the entire cost of whatever we have made till [indiscernible]. We -- and IP stays with us, but us to keep on monetizing it in future, either on different mediums or do a remake and all that kind of rights, kind of monetization, also rights are still sitting with us, music is sitting with us. And when the contract with Netflix or Hotstar gets over between 3 to 11 years depending on what the deal is, you always have an opportunity to make money from [ contract deal ].

Okay, okay. And how many movies or any -- we have made 16, 17 movies as of now and many of them have done phenomenally well and have got very good critical review. So how -- do you think -- how much can we scale up this number over the next 3 to 5 years? I don't want the actual numbers, how can this -- how will this number grew?

Do we believe right now Yoodlee has a potential to touch triple digits in next 3 to 5 years? Yes.

Got it. That's a very big number.

And without making a INR 75 crore film. We're not in that business, I want to reiterate this. If we have to take a call between low revenue numbers, but keeping it -- continue to keep it on a risk-free levels, we'll earn on that side rather than make 1 large film to get a top line here.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Ravi Naredi from Naredi Investments.

Raviji, I was waiting for you.

So nice, so nice. I was waiting when you call me. Sir, first of all, because I'm the shareholder of this company since last many years and I have attended AGM in Kolkata. And so many times I met you. So you are a wonderful person in the company really. Sir, what is the plan to deploy INR 100 crores cash?

Sir, majority of investments is going to go back into music acquisition.

Okay, okay, okay. Maybe it will go to this one. And sir, can you give the separate margin in segment, music, film and publication?

Sir, but you have a broad idea right now on segmental margins what we are making. If you see our numbers right now, we are giving you numbers of music together and films and television. You have margin of the -- at the 2 segment levels, and it becomes easier this year right now because music and the top line we are also breaking up. How much is the top line of music -- music licensing and remaining is obviously Carvaan. So I think [Foreign Language] obviously finds out.

Okay. And sir, main -- who is our main competitor?

Sir, in India right now, our -- in the space of Hindi, the biggest company bigger than ours is still T-Series. Can you hear me?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, but we all are diversifying here. T-Series is getting more into large film production. T-series focuses more on Hindi and Punjabi. We are limiting ourselves on the big film production. We do films only from digital perspective we are getting into regional language in a very big fashion because our understanding of the Indian market is that Hindi will continue, but there's a huge growth coming out there in the regional languages. And there are no national level payers playing the game out. And Saregama because of the legacy of HMV has the relationship in each of these languages. So that's where we're differentiating and hopefully will be able to beat competition.

Right. Right. Right. And sir, the bifurcations, other income...

Sir, other income -- the other income...

The income that's different or...

Sir, other income, the 2 biggest constituents in last quarter has been the dividend that we have received from CESC, where we have a -- this is a group company in which we have an investment. And the interest that we people got from the income tax refund that we received last quarter. Those are the 2 big things, which -- and these are all -- these are all cash that has come out to us. These are only 2 big things that have happened.

Bifurcation -- bifurcation possible, dividend or income tax -- interest on IT?

[Foreign Language] You'll know how many shares I have and [indiscernible].

Yes. Yes, I'll calculate from the balance sheet item, no problem.

Sir, we will give this breakup in annual report.

The next question is from the line of Riddhima Chandak from Roha Asset Managers.

Sir, basically, my question is on the music part. So in FY '20, our music revenue contribution was approximately 53%, whereas in FY '21, it is 74% and so our margins has increased significantly, call of that, from 20-odd percent to 40%, 49%. So apart from the music licensing, that is INR 100-odd crores revenue in FY '21 and INR 200-odd crores in FY '20, there's a big drop in that revenue. So where is that remaining revenue coming from?

Riddhima, I'm a little confused right now about your question. So music, music has got 2 parts in it. Music got music licensing and Carvaan. When you see the segment of music right now, the digital have given, that will have music licensing, which is a B2B business. The licensing business, we will give content to other party. And then there is Carvaan revenue. We have already given you the music licensing revenue in our presentation for the financial year '21. The remaining is Carvaan. In financial year '21, the numbers of Carvaan have fallen down. While music licensing revenue grew up by 20%, the Carvaan number because of lockdown have shown a big decline in this financial year, if that was your question?

Yes, yes, right. And also like in the quarter 4, our music revenue has dropped down only because of the Carvaan, right?

Because the Carvaan number that you see our number is 138,000 in quarter 3, which have come down to 110,000. Also remember, I tried to explain this in my opening part. It's actually not that quarter 4 has fallen down. Quarter 3 for us is an exceptional quarter every year because Carvaan sales rose up during Diwali and the very nature of our music licensing agreement, there are a couple of agreements where overflow comes in, the money that we make beyond our minimum guarantee. It so happens right now that it falls in quarter 3. Quarter 3 always sees a spike and quarter 4 comes back to normalcy. So you have to see our data year after year. This is not just 1-year phenomenon. Q3 will be the peak. So Q1 is the lowest normally, go to Q2, then Q4, then Q3. That's typically how the cycle follows for us.

The next question is from the line of Maan Vardhan Baid from Laurel Investment Advisors.

Again, congratulations on a fantastic set of numbers. Vikram, I just wanted to understand that -- I mean, the last 2 quarters, the YouTube views have jumped significant. I mean this quarter, it's up almost 25% Q-o-Q. So just wanted to understand, has this jump in view started reflecting in numbers or...

Yes, it has, it has. See you need to understand when I'm showing a 20% growth, it's coming from somewhere. We have not shown too much of new music in this part of Hindi music. So let me -- there are 2 other data points that I shared with you, see it in that light. We people till an year back were not writing too much of revenue on the TV serials opera that we upload on YouTube. Last year, we have written 1.5 billion views, see that Sun TV serials that we people upload on our YouTube channel. In Q4, it was 577 million, this is a big increase. Bhojpuri which was 0, 1 year back, has written 400 million views right now in the last 1 year. So these are 2 big data [Technical Difficulty] so that Hindi in general has grown. Okay?

So sort of given the kind of pace of growth that one is seeing in that particular channel, so where do you expect that channel to be a year down the line?

YouTube specific?

Yes.

I can't comment on now in a specific vertical, which makes my negotiation position very difficult when you have to chat with YouTube for the next deal, but also like maintain right now, the music licensing, remember...

In terms of views. I mean, in terms of views. I don't mean monetarily or anything on those lines, but...

No, no, views actually...

Active growth that one is seeing on 1 particular...

But remember the fact that the real thing is YouTube is not just views, but the fill rate. Fill rate means in how many of these views that are getting an ad. That's where the real game is. Otherwise, they're useless views right now because they don't generate any revenue for me. So there is 1 factor in my hand, which is increase views. There is a factor in YouTube hands right now that how much of advertising demand are they getting, and at what price are they able to drive? If they are able to drive the price higher and they're able to fill more of it, I make more money. So there are other variables too in YouTube. There is a high colinearity. There is some amount of causal effect relationship also, higher views into higher revenue, but it's not a guarantee because the other 2 factors also have to play. Am I making sense to you?

Yes, yes. Totally, absolutely. So here on, the kind of content that you are sort of focusing on, for example, let's say, the Hindi music that is coming out on YouTube, et cetera, is with fill rate in mind?

Yes. So we try to do content right now, which is slightly more premium because that attracts more and more brands to go back and advertise here, and we can do it till a point. Beyond the point right now, if YouTube is not getting ads only, there is little anybody can do. And I'm talking philosophically out here. So yes, our focus continues being come out with content, which is going to get us a large amount of views. A single song these days if it's a successful song ends up bringing between 50 million to 100 million views. We have launched a song with the #1 Bhojpuri artist called Pawan Singh 10 days back, it is touching 11 million views. We launched a song with B Praak in the month of February touching 80 million views. And this is still the beginning. A song -- the moment Bollywood songs are coming in right now, we know we've touched 150, 200 million YouTube views.

The next question is from the line of Saket Mehrotra from Tusk Investments.

I just want -- I just wanted to ask you about these brand partnerships that, I think, they have come up in this quarter with [indiscernible] presentation. So are these licensing being done, say, on a ad basis or a campaign basis? Or do they have like, say, annual contract with these brands?

First, right now, this is bread and butter for us. In fact, brand licenses are being issued for last 6 years that I've been here. We have been doing it. The pace has increased a lot. Earlier, people were not taking that much of retro music. Now more and more brands are looking forward to picking a retro song as part of their ad with the overall rise in popularity. The way licenses are issued right now, these are all period based licenses. You can use my song in your ad for this much amount of time. That's 1 factor. Second is India territory or global territory. Third is only television or television plus digital. And then how many edits of those ads are going to be done? Are you going to have a 60 seconder also and a 30 seconder also and 15 seconder also, rates vary depending upon these 4 variables. Okay?

Secondly, on product and platform play that you're talking about Carvaan. While you've also mentioned this in your presentation that you've done sort of [ context ] in terms of the popularity of podcast. But isn't this sort of again going against what we strive to be a more content focused company rather than, say, looking at making a platform?

See, that's a conscious call we people have taken and spoken about it is, that we will -- there are only 2 areas that we want to dabble in, only account -- being a pure-play content IP company focusing on content from literally a newborn to a person till his last day, or the entire range of content in audio and video. And second is create a platform looking very sharply targeted using physical infrastructure at 35 to 40 plus people. We believe right now, there are very few brands that are focusing in that particular space. With Carvaan, we have had a huge success, and we want to further capitalize on that sector. It is not a music platform. It's a platform for taking care of all the audio needs at this juncture of the customer. [indiscernible] changes, we want to see where is -- how it's playing without blowing money behind it. We are -- this year also since we know that the markets are going to be shut most of the time, we're going to be extremely cautious in our spend. The content that is coming out here right now is coming without any payment from our side. People just want to ride on the Carvaan platform. We'll keep on monitoring the performance of it for some more time and then take a call what the future of this product will be.

The next question is from the line of Aman Vij from Astute Investment Management.

Just 2 questions. So first question is on the segments of licensing. So I understand you don't want to give the segments' revenue and all those things, but if you can talk about the growth in the 3 segments, Publishing, OTT and YouTube, which were, say, faster than the company's average, and which were a little slower than what you expected?

No, no, so you see, the problem with the first one, which is audio streaming, the actual numbers move in a linear line, but the revenues don't follow because of the very nature of our deals. When I do a deal with the platform, I charge them say 10 paisa every time a song is heard. I get a share of advertising money, I get a share of subscription money, but there's a minimum guarantee that protects me. Now if there is no overflow coming, if suppose they make 90%, 95% of minimum guarantees, then the revenues change in a step function. So there may be times right now, where multiple contracts are getting bunched in to get a massive jump in a particular growth rate? And then again, it goes right off, stable for some time and then you get another step function. Am I logical here?

Yes, yes, yes. Makes sense.

On YouTube, it's completely variable. The more amount of advertising I keep on generating right now, it starts showing out there in my revenue. On television channels, these are fixed fee nature. They typically take a revision every 2 years, these are 2-year deals. Of the growth that we are seeing right now, obviously, the ones which are digital in nature apart, the music streaming apps, YouTube of the world, short-form and video sharing apps are seeing the most rapid growth because customer is sitting in there. And we are also investing heavily to manage that. There's an entire bunch of people operating out of Calcutta, whose only job is to monitor every new video that is breaking out, to see if that video is coming from India or any of the areas there's a large Indian population, to check out if any of my song is getting used there, then looking at through audio fingerprinting software, again we verifying, because if they are using, then we file a case of infringement and force them to take a license. All our efforts also are moving more and more towards digital because the real numbers are coming from there.

Sure, sir. So just to understand this point, again, can you talk about your guidance of 22% to 25%, the streaming part then is actually that linear -- it is linear, but then variable part is like step-up can happen. And still, you are very confident of that 22% to 25%.

So that will happen out here, it averages out, because not every contract is getting renewed on the same day. So sometimes, that's why you will find seasonality in our numbers. Sometimes in a particular quarter because of whatever reason, if there 2 contracts are getting negotiated -- because contracts keep on changing from 1 year to 2 years. If 2 contracts are getting negotiated at the same time and there is a step-up function, you immediately see that impact on that quarter onwards. Overall, still I'm thinking right now, because it evens out during the 12 months. We are looking at a 22% to 25% growth in music licensing business on a 3- to 5-year basis?

Sure, sure, makes sense. The next question is on the YouTube part, where we have a vision target of 3 digits in next 3, 5, 7 years. So what kind of margin should we expect when you reach that level?

The revenue -- the margins that we make right now will come on 2 fronts. In the initial stages, the margin is the money that I make on day 1. That I'm writing a revenue on day 1 and taking the full charge, and that's the money I end up making. Most -- the second cycle of monetizing that same content, we have not tested it out. As I said earlier, when we issue a license to a digital platform for a movie, it goes from 3 to 10, 11 years to that platform. When it will come back, there is an additional kicker that will come in because I can relicense it. I'm not factoring that at all. That is potential upside, maybe it comes, maybe it doesn't. On a stand-alone basis, the day we write revenue versus charge-off, our internal capacity, very, very clear should be anything between 15% to 20%.

Even at today's scale and maybe next year's scale, maybe next year...

Actually, in this point, right now, scale has got limited parts because I will have a fixed cost. So it's not that fixed cost is not going to get amortized over a large scale. Every time the movie is getting done or a series is done, a fresh team has got on board, only the core team stays. A fresh bunch of people come in, they work on the project, they disperse again. We may again pull them for some other project and load the cost of those guys again to that project. We are not in the business of building studios. We are not in the building of -- business of building large postproduction units, everything is variable.

Sure, sure, and finally, on the... [Audio Gap]

Vikram, first of all, congratulations on the fantastic year and really -- really, really happy with the performance. Breaking off [Technical Difficulty] if you can just please continue sharing that quarterly, not annually.

And we will do it quarterly. So this is a practice that has started, and you will see it coming from our side every quarter now.

Fantastic, Vikram. Great to know. So, Vikram, suggest -- I know it's been a very long call, and I think one of your longest call. So if I just put you 5 years away from now, so say, 2026, 2027, what plan -- where do you -- one, where do you see Saregama to be? And are there any goals you want to set yourself to be? And what will not let you get there? So my question is, what are the problems that can get you to whatever plans internally that you have for Saregama and for all the divisions as well?

See, these kind of questions require some serious amount of introspection, the second part, especially. The performance of the global companies. Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner, the 3 big guys here. And if you check their performance, you start realizing that, at Saregama, are we doing something out of the world, exceptional? No. Music industry itself is on a real upswing worldwide. It's just that the people who have got a large size are able to benefit from it that much more. People who have got very small catalogs cannot play this game because their negotiation powers are very, very weak. So in India also, as the game starts becoming bigger, I believe the multiple labels which are coming up right now, [Foreign Language] which are all vanity project, everything will start dying away. There will be only 2, 3 guys who will be left, who are sitting with large catalog, are going to fight this out. Also, I see right now, digital is going to become a massive savior of any IT company because I can now go out there -- the good part of digital is I can officially reach out to somebody living in Timbuktu and give my content which is impossible in the world of physical. The bad problem of digital was that it gave rise to piracy, so I could not monetize it. But what the app world has very nicely done -- app world has done very, very nicely out here, that in the apps world, it's easy to go back and control piracy. Browser world [Foreign Language] piracy could not be controlled. I can upload any song of Saregama from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and there's nothing that Saregama as a company can do. But in the app world, it's very easy for me to go to the gatekeeper called Apple or Google and tell them that this app is infringing my content. That is -- for me, these are huge factors, which are going to ensure right now that the music industry general in India is going to grow leaps and bounds. It's still a very, very small industry. [Foreign Language] we can be happy about it, it's hardly anything. So we see industry growing. We see as a larger player, especially Saregama able to consolidate its position across languages. We are -- in terms of top line, we are #2. We see -- we see growing in a significant passion because we have a play in multiple languages. So music portion is very clear and focused in our head. Let me come to Yoodlee. Yoodlee is the place right now there are multiple guys who are fighting it out. We are not the only people. Yoodlee is not a play because Yoodlee [Foreign Language] every film is a film. So just because you have a large amount of catalog sitting with you does not give you necessarily a very huge advantage towards making the next film a hit. That will be -- for us, the big part in Yoodlee is that we should maintain our focus on small budgeted, high on story drama. Like where we start saying, now let's make a 100 crore film, that's the day according to me, there's a problem coming on you. Because that's not the expertise we have in our DNA. We have in our DNA having made TV serials for years, it's running a very cost-efficient module. There is no wastage happening and every money spent can be seen in front of the camera. Carvaan, I'll be honest with you, I can't predict at this moment. I will wait for things to stabilize. That's why Carvaan is literally working out, there is no expenses, let things move out there on their own, managed at basic level expenses only. So that I'm able to go back and achieve a breakeven. Let the markets open up, let's get a genuine understanding of where the Carvaan stands, we'll take our call at that time.

The next question is from the line of Mayur Gathani from Ohm Group.

Sir, just looking at the receivables, INR 87 cr, if I'm not mistaken. So what is this more referring to? Because on the music, probably, you will get advances, right? The upfront payments would be there for you.

Can you repeat -- can you come again? I'm not -- just not clear about the question, I'm so sorry.

Sir, on the trade receivables, I think this figure of around INR 87 cr, what does this refer to? Because on the music side, you will be getting most advanced payments, right, the minimum guarantee, et cetera, would be upfront?

Vineet, will you take it? Vineet, go ahead.

Yes, yes, yes. Trade receivables actually include all 4 businesses, right? Licensing, it is not that always we got in advance. Once we enter the contract, sometimes it takes some time in signing the contract and billing it. So there is always be some amount of receivables pending there. There's some amount of receivables there for the film business. It will remain for 1 month. Like in last quarter, we have sold a movie, billed in the month of March. This money we received only in -- till now didn't this money. So on March 31, we will have that receivable. Similarly, when you go on the south TV side, we give credit of 4 months because what kind of ad slots we sold, we have to get the [indiscernible] factors of 4 months. So this is sum total of all 4. If you see from the last financial year, there is a huge amount of reduction in the debtors.

Yes. I see that. So I would -- it would be fair to understand that this is not more towards music, but toward other segments of the business?

It is blend of all. I will not say it's for all. It's a blend of all actually. See the chances of any of the trade receivables becoming bad debt are very, very low. Just a qualification I want to go back and put here.

Yes. I think so very important if you see my -- whenever you see my annual report, because we're going to declare the line item as return there, there is -- provision is going to be miniscule, to the extent is negative.

The last question is from the line of Dhwanil Desai.

Congratulations for a very good set of numbers. And special thanks for disclosing this content acquisition numbers. I think it's very useful. It's been a long call, and I think most of the questions have been covered. Just 2 questions from my side. So this year, despite we have not acquired any new music content, we have still grown our streaming revenues by 20%. And my understanding is that generally new music acquisition and the initial bump-up that we get adds significant number to the growth. So going forward, as we go aggressive on our music acquisition, this 20% number, can it grow higher than 25% plus as we go aggressive on the new music acquisition?

This is the question that I am [indiscernible] times. You're fair in your assessment and looking at [Foreign Language]. Remember, a large amount of growth that we people were able to manage in the last 2 to 3 years were coming out of efficiencies and giving our content to newer and newer platforms. Industry is growing at 11% to 12%. What is Saregama doing so special right now because of which we are able to manage a 20% growth. Are these -- that [indiscernible] lower side. We are using data analytics in a very big fashion right now to ensure that we get bigger bang for the buck. But many of these things as we come this year also, many of these benefits [Foreign Language] incremental part, it may not be giving us an 8%, 10% [Foreign Language] figure over the industry growth. So when I am saying [Foreign Language] and if there are no new digital platform stopping up in the country, that may come down to 13%, 14%. I'm confident about this. And because I know that there is new content coming in, we are seeing the impact of new content, even when you say that there is very low content investment in the year, which is a fact [Foreign Language] Bhojpuri helped us a lot, Gujarati helped us a lot right now to go back and ramp up the numbers. So I still maintain, at least for 1 year, allow us to see the impact. Remember, this is a giant, which used to be the monopoly of music business, which completely walked out of music business, is coming back in a -- for the first time in such a big fashion with the likes of Sanjay Leela Bhansalis and Shanker films and some other films we'll be announcing soon, very big budget stuff. This is what HMV used to be at one time. Every Amitabh Bacchan film and Rajesh Khanna film, everything used to go on to HMV. That's the world we are coming in. Give me an year, let me see what the impact is once some of these movies get released. If you have to revise, we will revise. Right now, I'll maintain 22% to 25%.

Yes. Very fair answer, Vikram. And second question is on Yoodlee. So 2 parts to it. The first one is, I think you said that typically, when we license the content to platforms in the -- on an outright basis and not on a deal basis, our typical licensing period locking was 3 to 11 years, and our first film actually was probably licensed in 2017, '18. So we are approaching the time where we will start getting our content back, which will be free for monetization. So any thoughts on your strategy? Would you like to first build the entire catalog, get it back and then license? Or will it be on a deal to deal, movie to movie basis?

All I can tell you right now, I think second part I can answer easily, it will be on a deal to deal basis. I don't see this -- what is good part is that the TV rights of all of them are -- at this time, they are retained by us. So there, we want to build a largest enough catalog before we go to TV channels. But TV channels typically prefer more mainstream cinema than the kind of cinema that a Netflix or an Amazon and a Hotstar like. But on the digital side, as the movies keep on coming back to us, we will find ways to monetize it immediately rather than just trying to keeping them with us.

Okay. Got it. And on the Yoodlee, Vikram, I sensed a bit slight change in your tone. I mean, always, you used to say that Yoodlee is a 15%, 20% steady growth business. And I think for the first time, you said that if the series kind of comes through, then it will change something for Yoodlee in terms of scale, top line. So I mean, why -- what is it that statement...

No, no, so things are changing, things are changing rapidly. I am still maintaining my number. I'm not changing my 15% to 20%, right.

Understood, I mean what is your sense which is giving you that impairment?

See Yoodlee came as a complete outsider in 2017, and nobody gave it a chance, whether in the production world, television world, digital world or the investor world. [Foreign Language]. Slowly Yoodlee has ended up building a reputation and is getting more and more importance right now from the top platforms, who are saying, why don't you do and try something bigger, we are ready to hand over this project to you. Literally, [Foreign Language] we would be in a position right now to double the revenue that we wrote this year. But till the time the things don't happen -- COVID lockdown continues right now, even if I get the project, I may not be able to shoot a single scene here. It's the uncertainty which is forcing me to still say 15% to 20%, though I know the way feedback is coming from the market and the interest is coming in Yoodlee, I don't see within what 5 to -- why shouldn't Yoodlee be in triple digits.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Vikram Mehra for closing comments.

Very little left. I'm realizing the advantage of having this call on a day when the market is shut. Everybody has got more time and everybody is more peaceful. I just repeat what I said during the call. We maintain a bullish stance on music licensing. We expect it to grow 22% to 25% over the next 2 years. We will continue with a focus on new content. We believe it's very important to keep this company relevant in the days to come and it makes smart business sense. We will keep on investing in the film space on Hindi, Tamil and Telugu and in the nonfilm music space in Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi. We will use data in an extensive fashion right now to direct us as to how should the investments be happening. The focus is also going to be to keep on buying big blockbuster musicals that are coming from a Bollywood or from a Tamil cinema or a Telugu cinema. I expect if everything goes right, some of these movies will start getting released from Q2 onwards, worst-case scenario Q3 onwards, and that's when you start seeing the impact of this content. We will continue with an extremely cautious approach on Carvaan. We'll wait and watch and see when the retail market opens up and only when we are very, very comfortable that the market has completely opened up will we start making any move on promoting or aggressively pushing Carvaan. Till that time, the focus is on margins and not on the revenue. Films, we will -- our focus is on Hindi space on doing only on presold deals, that means somebody tells us that they want to pick up the movie and we make the movie. Otherwise, the -- our own focus is going to be either on regional content. Or again, on a presold basis on digital series. We are very, very hopeful right now that soon we will be able to announce at least 1 web series mandate. Once the official agreement is done, I'll be happy to make that announcement. On an year-on-year basis right now, and where I stand, at least for this year, I still maintain 15% to 20%. If things change a lot right now, we'll come to you end of the quarter. Overall, we are bullish the way we have been able to prove that as digital explosion is happening, Saregama with the humongous amount of IP that it owns right now is in a great position to monetize it in music, in films, on series -- digital series part and the TV series part. As far Q1 is concerned, I will just put a word of caution right now, because I don't know which way this COVID lockdown is going to happen. COVID lockdown does not have any impact on music. Can have an impact on Carvaan, which I'm already seeing here and can have -- if the lockdowns continue further, will have a lockdown impact on our TV serial business also. But remember, like last time, it will be -- I see Q1 very similar to last year's Q1, but overall, it's a phasing issue. Even if you have [indiscernible] trend that of Q1 right now, Q2, Q3 onwards, we will be able to make up whatever happens in Q1. So by and large, we are very happy with the way financial year '21 turned out and as a management team, it's a very steady rock-solid management team. Everybody part of this system right now for 3 to 4 to 5 years. All believe in this business and we are here because we believe that the future is going to be even worthier. Thank you, I hope and wish right now everybody is safe.

Thank you.