Info Edge (India) Limited (NAUKRI) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good evening, everyone. I am Anand Bansal. I am joined today by my colleague, Vineet Ranjan. Thank you for joining us. We'll wait for a couple of minutes for others to log in. Vineet, we have 76 participants with us. You can go ahead now.

Thank you, Anand. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to InfoEdge India Limited quarter 4 FY26 earning conference call. Joining us today from the management, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikchandani, founder and vice chairman, Mr. Hidesh Obray, co-promoter and managing director, and Mr. Amrish Ragubanshi, chief financial officer. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the detailed disclaimer included in this presentation for good order's sake. And kindly note that the conference is being recorded, all the participant lines will remain on mute, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A after the presentation concludes. Now, I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Itesh Obray for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Itesh.

Thank you, Vineet, and a very good evening, everyone, and welcome to InfoEdge's earnings calls for the fourth quarter of FY26. We will begin with an overview of our standalone financial performance, followed by business highlights for each segment, along with our commentary on the strategy for each business. We will then take questions. For the standalone business in Q4 of FY26, billing was Rs. 1,057 crores, a YOY growth of 7%, and revenue was Rs. 805 crores, a YOY growth of 17%. Operating profits at a standalone level grew by 39% year-on-year to Rs. 323 crores, and the operating margins stood at 40%. The standalone business generated cash from operations before taxes of Rs. 621 crore in Q4 of FY26, a YOY growth of 16%. The cash generation from the recruitment business was Rs. 619 crores. The non-recruitment businesses at an aggregate level generated cash of Rs. 37 crores in Q4 of FY26. For the standard-owned business in full-year FY26, billing was Rs. 3,178 crores, a YOY growth of 10%, and revenue was Rs. 3,052 crores, a YOY growth of 15%. Operating profits grew by 17% year-on-year to Rs. 1,138 crores, and the operating margin was 37%. The standard-owned business generated cash from operations before taxes of Rs. 1,469 crores in FY26, a YOY growth of 12%. The cash balance of InfoEdge, including wholly-owned subsidiaries at the end of March 2026, stood at Rs. 4,963 crores. Continuing the track record of progressively improving shareholder distributions, the board has also approved a final dividend of Rs. 3.6 per share for the year. This adds to the total dividend payout of Rs.8.4 per share for FY26, a 40% increased dividend payout versus last year. Moving on to the segmental performance and starting with the recruitment business. In Q4 of FY26, the standalone recruitment billings grew by 10% to Rs.811 crores, and revenue grew by 14% to Rs.581 crores. Recruitment billings, including Zoeyman 2 Select, grew by 9% to Rs.838 crores, and revenue grew by 12% to Rs.608 crores. The operating profit for the standalone recruitment segment improved by 22% year-on-year to Rs. 340 crores, and the operating profit margin was 58%. Cash generated from recruitment operations was Rs. 619 crores, a YOY growth of 16%. In full year FY26, the standalone recruitment billings grew by 10% to Rs.2,374 crores, and revenue grew by 14% to Rs.2,256 crores. Recruitment billings, including ZOEM and 2Select, grew by 9% to Rs.2,461 crores, and revenue grew by 13% to Rs.2,343 crores. The recruitment, the operating profit for the standalone recruitment segment. Improved by 14% year-on-year to Rs. 1277 crores, and the operating profit margin was 57%, and cash generated from the recruitment operations was Rs. 1513 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 13%. The key operating highlights for the year, FY26 was a year of moderate growth. For the recruitment business, after a strong second half of FI25, with Q4 FI25 billings growing at 18% year on IOI, growth slowed down to 9% in Q1 of FI26, and remained in the 9-11% range across all quarters of FI26. The year was impacted by geopolitical headwinds, tariff related to uncertainty, and a generally cautious hiring stance amongst corporates both in global demand-linked sectors such as IT as well as domestically oriented ones. The softer hiring environment was also reflected in the JobSpeak Index, which grew at 7-8% by OI for the full year. At a segment level, in Q4, billing for tech, IT, and BPM segments combined grew at 6% year on year. GCCs de-grew by 1%, recruitment consultants grew at 8%, and other sectors combined grew at 14%. Quarterly numbers can sometimes be influenced by renewal timings for large accounts. Full-year figures are a more reliable representation of underlying trends. For the full year FY26, tech, IT, and BPM combined grew by 8% year-on-year, GCCs grew by 10%, recruitment consultants grew by 6%, and other sectors grew by 8%. IIT services directly, 90% of billings grew 10% YOY in FY26 versus 8% in FY25. Other sectors which directly account for 29% of all billings grew relatively slower at 8% in FY26 versus 14% in FY25. The moderation largely reflecting broader economic conditions and sector-specific factors. The Naukri jobseeker services business reported Rs 53 crores in billings. A YOY growth of 33%, with 60% operating profit margin in Q4 of FY26. For the full year FY26, it reported Rs. 176 crores in billings, a YOY growth of 19%, with an operating profit of 98 crores, and a 57% operating profit margin. Naukri Gulf billings in Q4 of FY26 were Rs.41 crores, growing 9% year-on-year, a step-down from the 22% growth this business had been delivering before regional disturbances in the Middle East. Operating PVT margins were 42% in Q4. Over the full-year FY26, it reported Rs.126 crores in billing, a YOY growth of 16%, with a 41 crore operating profit and a 35% operating profit margin. Jaube continued to operate on a freemium model with a focus on select markets. Platform metrics remained healthy and revenues continued to grow. The business remains in investment phase and we're making good progress on monetization. On the job seeker front, the Naukri platform now hosts approximately 115 million resumes and added an average of around 21,000 resumes per day during Q4 of FY26. Marketing expenses were lowered by 13% year-on-year in Q4, despite continued investments in JobHair and other smaller businesses as they scale up their monetization efforts. As a result, the operating profit margin improved by 400 basis points to over 58% in Q4. Excluding job hair, the recruitment margin was around 61% in the quarter. For the full year FY26, the operating margins slightly improved to 57% at a standalone level and to 59% excluding job hair. Moving over to the real estate segment, in Q4 of FY26, billings grew by 2% to Rs. 163 crores, whereas revenue grew by 36% to Rs. 144 crores. During the quarter, we have rationalized the warranty provision related assumptions linked to certain products in the 99 acres business, where we endeavor to charge based on delivered leads as opposed to the 10-year-based subscriptions. The trend over the last few quarters during which these lead-based products were formalized has now provided us with a more credible basis for the estimation of such a warranty. Accordingly, a portion of the accumulated provision over the last eight quarters has been reversed. And revenue for the quarter as well as for the year stands increased by Rs 20.5 crores as a result. This is not material under applicable accounting standards and hence has not been separately disclosed in the financials. This is a one-time reversal and is not expected to recur in the future at this point in time. Operating profits in Q4 were Rs 3 crores, whereas a cash generated from operations in 99 acres was Rs 22 crores in Q4 of FY26. In the Fulier, FI 26 billings in 99 acres grew by 10% to Rs. 497 crores, and revenue grew by 19% to Rs. 488 crores. Operating losses were Rs. 559 crores, and cash losses from operations were Rs. 5 crores in FI 26. During Q4, we undertook changes in the 99 Acres sales organization and tightened certain key processes and adherence to these processes to set up the business for sustained long-term growth. This had a one-time transitional impact on Q4 billings. We expect billings growth to recover in Q1 once again. 99 Acres continues to strengthen its traffic leadership with its web traffic share growing to 49% in Q4 of FY26 from 46% in the prior quarter. On the app, we command 54% of overall traffic share, app traffic share, and 67% share now of iOS app traffic timeshare. The overall market share of 99 acres in March was 51% and in April, 52% traffic time share. Supply momentum remains strong across categories. Live resale-come-rental listings from brokers grew 35% year-on-year, and live new project listings grew 28% year-on-year during the quarter. We continue to gain fresh supply share across residential, resale, rental, and commercial segments in both the owner and broker channels. Taken together, consistent traffic share gains and improving response growth over the past several quarters now reflect continued market share expansion in both traffic and revenue terms. Q4 was a reset. The underlying business trajectory remains impact. And we expect growth to recover going forward. Moving over to the matchmaking business. In Q4 of FY26, Jeevansati Billings grew by 21% to Rs. 39 crores and Revenue grew by 19% to Rs. 36 crores. The business incurred an operating loss of Rs. 3 crores and generated cash from operations of Rs. 4 crores in Q4 of FY26. Our matchmaking portfolio, including Jeevansati and Isle combined, reported Rs. 49 crores billings, a YOY growth of 23%, and combined operating losses were Rs. 7 crores in Q4. In full-year FY26, Jeevansati billings grew by 28% to Rs. 142 crores, and revenue grew by 26% to Rs. 138 crores. The business incurred an operating loss of Rs. 4 crore, and generated cash from operations of Rs. 15 crores in FY26. The Jeevansati plus IL business combined reported Rs 182 crores in billings, a YOY growth of 29%, and combined operating losses reduced by 50% to Rs 15 crores in FY26. Jeeva Sathi remained focused on improving sales conversions and ARPUs during the year. The market continues to be competitive with leading matrimony platforms investing in marketing and offering higher-than-usual discounts. This has led to some pressure on pricing. However, our ability to withstand such an environment has improved substantially, particularly in the Hindi-speaking markets. The business is now the market leader in terms of users logged in every day in these markets. Aisle grew at 30% plus year-on-year during the quarter, the dating markets. It has been relatively less competitive in the last couple of years, which presents an opportunity for apps under the aisle of Prela to grow even faster. Arike, the Malayalam-focused app, is now growing at an even higher pace. Moving on to the education business, in Q4 of FI26, billing was Rs. 45 crores, a wire-wide decline of 13%, and revenue grew by 11% to Rs. 44 crores. The business delivered an operating profit of Rs. 6 crores and generated cash from operations of Rs. 11 crores in Q4 of FY26. In the full year of FY26, billing was Rs. 164 crores, a YOY growth of 1%, and revenue grew by 13% to Rs. 170 crores. The business delivered an operating profit of Rs. 13 crores and generated cash from operations of Rs. 22 crores in FY26. Yeah, driven. Changes in search behavior have been affecting Shiksha's traffic for several quarters. In Q4, this translated into a more direct billing impact as reduced referred search traffic from Google affected client deliveries. We expect this headwind to persist over the near term. To navigate this and sustain growth, Shiksha's investing in domestic counseling capabilities and AI-driven voice boards to scale and complement these efforts. As adoption and monetization of these services improve, we expect them to progressively offset the AI-led impact. The study abroad segment in the education business saw softness in certain markets, particularly the US and Canada, driven by evolving student preferences and broader macro factors in these geographies. We are actively broadening our destination coverage with increased focus on the UK, UAE, and continental Europe to better align with where student demand is moving. Let me talk you through our business strategy and our key focus areas for FI27 now. In the recruitment business, the core Naukri strategy is centered around three variables. Hiring volume, our share of hiring, and revenue per hire. We are focused on improving all three. In the premium segment, we are deepening focus through targeted offerings, including Naukri top-tier, IAM jobs, and HiRest, while growing employer branding solutions to improve monetization. In the mid-level segment where we are the clear leader, AI-led capabilities are enhancing recruiter productivity and workflow automation, while job marketing, data products, and assisted services are improving revenue per hire. In the value segment, job hire is expected to play an increasingly important role over time. The success here depends on building real-time labor matching and simple workforce solutions suited to the informal economy. Naukri's B2B growth drivers are broadening as a result, while organic volume and pricing remains the foundation. Newer offerings like AI RECs are agentic AI offering for recruiters, Tarant Pulse are data offerings for our customers, branding solutions, and premium products. I expect you to contribute meaningfully in the near term. Job Hai adds a further growth layer over the medium to long term. Beyond the core B2B business, our jobseeker services segment has seen meaningful revenue acceleration and improved profitability following the transition to Nokia 360. The shift to a self-serve. Online first model has driven the online revenue mix from 27% to 53% in the last 15 months, while monthly active users have been growing. Paid users as a percentage of MAU of the monthly active user base have also risen from 1.2% to 2.2% over the last 15 months, with meaningful headroom ahead. Naukri Gulf has delivered 20% plus billing growth over recent years. In progress from breakeven to a 35% operating margin business, the structural opportunity in the Middle East remains intact, and we see a strong runway for continued profitable growth. Moving on to the real estate business, 99 acres has consistently expanded traffic share by approximately 0.5 to 1 percentage point per month over the last 12 to 18 months. In residential resale, daily fresh supply is up 40% over the last two years. Our supply share has crossed 50%, and response growth has nearly doubled. In new projects, a market estimated at approximately 5,000 to 5,500 crores. We are seeing early momentum, with responses now growing 30% year-on-year after being flat last year. In the recent rollout of 99 shots in NCR, It aims to drive deeper engagement in this segment, with expansion to other major cities planned for FY27. Rental and commercial are also seeing faster growth in response. Operating gains in supply, traffic, and responses typically translate into billings with a lag. In FY26, we cautiously made forward investments in 99 Acres to strengthen its competitive position and become a clear market leader. With the heavy lifting now behind us, we expect growth to accelerate, operating leverage to play out, and the business to turn cash-generative in FY27, if all goes well. In the matchmaking business, Jeevan Sati has now delivered 20-30% YOY billing growth over the past couple of years and is nearing break-even after operating losses of Rs. 120 crores a few years ago, with a close to 45%-plus profile share in Hindi-speaking markets, and AI-driven recommendations, matching, and pricing are focused on building a more dominant position and driving higher monetization. The IL business recorded Rs 39 crores in billings in FY26 with over 30% YOY growth and reduced operating losses. R&K within the Malayali market is now growing at 40% year-on-year and is a meaningful contributor to IL revenues. The matchmaking portfolio is positioned to sustain healthy growth while contributing to overall cash flow. The Shiksha business continues to face headwinds from AI-driven changes in search behavior, which have affected traffic and billings. To navigate this, we are pivoting towards counseling and marketing services, including AI-driven voice bots to complement domestic counseling efforts, and diversifying destination coverage and study abroad towards markets like the UK, UAE, and continental Europe. We expect these initiatives to progressively offset search-led headwinds as monetization matures. Across all our businesses, whether matching job seekers and employers, home buyers with properties, or individuals seeking life and education decisions, we have proprietary data. We track millions of daily interactions and apply deep AI and ML capabilities to improve recommendation quality, reduce friction, and deliver outcomes that go beyond what a typical listings or SaaS model can provide. We do not view AI as a distant radiation risk. If anything, it strengthens the case for platforms like ours with our proprietary data sets, two-side network effects, and deep domain contexts to deliver better matching, automate workflows, and make the experience meaningfully more productive for both sides. Done well. This translates into higher engagement, stronger outcomes, and a greater share of customer wallet over time. Accordingly, we have been consistently increasing our investments in AI over the last few years across infrastructure, people, and tools. In Naukri, what makes our approach distinctive is that we build intelligence on both sides of the marketplace, not just what a job seeker wants, but what an employer needs and how urgently they need it. This This two-sided data depth is the foundation of effective matching. And it's a capability that has been built over the years and cannot be replicated quickly. Our key AI priorities for FI27 are, one, enhancing matching personalization and productivity. We are continuously improving our ML models to deliver better outcomes for job seekers and recruiters alike. On the employer side, we are getting better at identifying hiring intent, such as distinguishing urgent, hard-to-fill roles from routine ones so the platform can match accordingly. On the job seeker side, we are progressing from search-led recommendation. A surge led to recommendation-led discovery where relevant opportunities are surfaced proactively. These efforts have already delivered 15-30% efficiency gains across various parts of our businesses. We are also constantly scaling up AI-powered features. Generative AI has unlocked a new class of features that were not previously possible. Several features launched over the last one year are already gaining healthy traction. AI-powered mock interviews are used by 1.5 million users monthly. AI-generated resumes are now powering 3 million profiles monthly, and AI-generated job descriptions are widely used by recruiters, amongst others. Our focus is on quality of outcomes, our volume of activity, making candidates more hireable and recruiters more effective. This year, we will deepen engagement and expand the breadth of these features. We are also continuously working hard to produce AI first products so that we can unlock new revenue streams. We are building products that go beyond feature additions. AIRX, our agentic recruitment platform, automates end-to-end hiring workflows for enterprises from job mandate intake to candidate shortlisting, meaningfully reducing the time to hire with over 1,000 clients onboarded and 30,000 job mandates already on AIRX. Early adoption is encouraging. Enterprise sales cycles for AI tools tend to be longer, and we are pacing accordingly, focused on deepening outcomes within existing large accounts, key accounts before scaling them further. AIRX is both a product innovation and a nascent revenue stream at this point in time. Of course, we also continue to embed AI in our internal processes. Generative AI is enabling faster product rollouts, scalable content creation, and more efficient marketing with several recent campaigns built entirely in-house using AI-led tools. Across our business, the logic is consistent. Better AI-driven outcomes drive higher adoption, and higher adoption translates into higher spending from customers. That is the foundation of our monetization approach. The focus for FI27 is on converting what we've already built into adoption and revenue. ARX has been rolled out to 1,000 clients, and we have now 30,000 job mandates on ARX, significantly reducing candidate sourcing time. Scaling its client base and deepening usage within existing accounts is a near-term priority. The ultimate measure of success, however, is how meaningfully we can reduce the end-to-end hiring cycle time for enterprise clients, and we continue to track this as a key metric. Premium X, a dedicated database for premium candidates, and data products such as Executive Intelligence and Talent Pulse represent additional monetization opportunities as we expand their reach amongst enterprise clients. In 99 acres, our AI recommendation engine is driving 10-15% improvement in unique interests, with monetization expected to follow as platform engagement strengthens. At Jeevansati, AI Power's recommendation matching the pricing end-to-end, monetization benefits are already flowing through and will continue to build over time. The priority for FY27 is accelerating adoption and converting product progress into meaningful revenue contributions. Thank you, and now we are happy to take questions.

Thank you, Desh. Anand, we already have a few questions. Maybe we can start. I know you are on mute.

Yeah, thank you, Vineet. First question is from Kaushik Gurumurthy from Bank of America. Kaushik, go ahead and ask your question.

Hey, this is Sachin Selgaoka from Bank of America. I have three questions. First question, again, want to understand a little bit more on the color on sentiment in hiring. When you talk to corporates, what kind of comments are we hearing in terms of how they're thinking on hiring, given what's happening in AI? And would be great to get color across GCC, IT sector and non-IT sector? Second question, let me actually go through all the three questions and then I'll pause to take answers from you. Second is obviously on 99 acres, clearly we're seeing good execution, good margins. Wanted to understand anything specific which happened in this quarter like competition was down or low marketing and directly how should we think about the sustainability of operating profits from these levels. And third, would love to understand, you know, how are you guys thinking from InfoEdge Ventures point of view, if there are any incremental opportunities we are seeing in India to invest from AI perspective? Thank you.

Yeah, see the overall job market, I think the sentiment continues to be like subdued. It's not a hot market. It's a lukewarm market. Of course, there is hiring happening in pockets. For example, you mentioned GCCs. The smaller GCCs continue to hire, but the larger ones, their headcount has shrunk over the last few quarters in some cases. The non-IT market has also slowed down a bit for us over the last few quarters. We've, of course, expanded our coverage. We are now in more cities than earlier. We have many more clients, but our pools are still low. So the overall sort of hiring environment is like, you know, it's not a hot market. It's not as if companies are sort of under pressure to hire quickly. They are taking their time. They are hiring for certain positions. Positions like in machine learning and AI, you know, there we see massive growth. A lot of companies want to hire this kind of talent. But, you know, and, you know, so amongst the GCCs, at least, there is pressure on the larger ones to sort of become, for people to become more productive. But let's see how this plays out over the next few quarters. I think a lot of this is also linked to the economy. And to what's happening globally, you know, and not just AI. So if the Indian economy picks up, we expect the non-IT sectors to start hiring once again and to start hiring a lot more people than earlier and attrition rates to pick up. But that will have to, that will depend on how the economy plays out over the next few quarters. And also, I guess once there is. You know, the uncertainty around the geopolitics, if things get better on that front, that should also help in the medium term. As far as 99 Acres is concerned, you know, we've... I think the team has done an incredible job of growing traffic share over the last few quarters. We've added at least 13, 14 points to our traffic share over the last few months. We are now a clear leader in almost every city, right? We estimate we have a 52% traffic. Our latest number for traffic share for April is 52% timeshare. And, you know, our response, the responses we deliver, ultimately our revenue is a function of the response we deliver to our clients. In the resale and rental segments, the responses have almost doubled over the last few quarters. In the new home segment, which is where we were a little slow, which is almost half our revenue, traffic responses have started growing. So, response grew by 22% in the new home segment last year. In Q4, it grew by 33%. So, we are confident that we'll do a good job in 99 acres this year. Monetization follows the lag. And once you get to 50-52% share. It's not easy for others to catch up, right? And that's where we are right now. And if we continue to add, you know, if we add a few more percentage points to share this year, I think we'll become a very, very strong leader in this market. Sanjeev, you want to take the question on InfoAdventures, yeah. You're on mute.

Yeah, sorry, on AI and influential. See, we just did a sort of enumeration just last week. So out of our 130 plus companies that you've done since 2007, which are non-study investments, today, a little over 50, maybe 50, 51, are deep tech or AI first? Right? Increasingly, almost all the companies that we see now have got an element of AI, and very many of them are AI first. And we're not going out and looking for AI companies. This is what we are finding, bubbling up from underneath. So clearly, the AI space is very, very active. The government, on deep tech, the government is putting a lot of effort and investment. There's a 100,000 crore RDI fund. There is a 20,000 crore fund for startups. There's a 10,000 crore AI fund. The government is put. It's a lot of government effort, a lot of private capital coming in, a lot of young entrepreneurs So there's a lot of action in AI. Our difficult task is to figure out who will succeed, who will fail, behind whom is there a moat, what can be replicated. You're not finding too many foundational models there. So it's not as if you're investing behind LLMs. But, you know, it's the app layer. And there you've got to ensure that, you know, there's a moat and you... Have a barrier to entry, and you can actually succeed and not be disrupted two years later. So that's long and short of AI.

Got it very clear. Just one small follow-up to Hitesh. This follow-up is more on competition on 99 acres. Are we seeing anything change from a competitive perspective, which is allowing us to move to 52% traffic share and continue to increase, or it's purely driven by strong execution?

At least our team would like to believe that it's, you know, our execution. See, we've done, I think, a lot of things right over the last few quarters. We've been very focused on a few things, and we've done a fantastic job of execution. I don't want to get into the details here, but I think a lot of the credit should go to the team for having done a really good job. I think... You know, as far as our competitors go, in the broker business, we compete with Magic Bricks and Housing. In the new home business, we compete with Meta and Google. And in the owner business, you know, we actually end up competing with Magic Weeks housing and no broker to some extent. My sense is all these, of course, Meta and Google are very, very strong players. You know, the new home market is a large market. And we are only now beginning to sort of make serious and drove into that market. It's a very big opportunity in the medium term for us. It's like a 5,000, 4,000, 5,000 crore TAM. And we do only about maybe 240-250 crores in this segment. But our response has started to grow. We need to get a few things right. Like I said, 20% to 22% response growth last year, but 33% growth in Q4. Hopefully, we'll be able to monetize better as we go forward. In the secondary market, resale and rental, you know, we've succeeded, we've managed to grow our customer count substantially over the last few quarters. We have managed to grow our supply share substantially over the last few quarters. And in every city now, in every city. Earlier, we used to be leaders in two or three other big cities, but now in Delhi, Bombay, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, in almost every big city now, we are traffic leaders. And supply leaders and leaders in terms of number of customers and increasingly on revenue as well. Competition. There have been a few issues with competition. There have been leadership changes at housing, at both housing and Magic Bricks. You know, housing, they sort of, they give out their numbers publicly. So I think their burn is now close to 250 crores a year. And they've sort of lost a lot of ground, in my view, in India. So maybe it's no longer as exciting for them as it was a few years ago. And in the owner segment also, we have made substantial progress over the last few quarters. So 99 acres is free for owners to list. And we monetize only a small percentage of owners who list their properties in 99 acres. So there's substantial headroom for growth there as well. And our supply share on the owner segment has also increased substantially over the last few quarters. Super clear.

Thank you. I'd like to add something to that. You see, Nike does not report to me. The operating businesses don't report to me. They report to Hitesh. But what I've observed sitting on the side of the operating businesses is that I think a fantastic team, a huge clarity of thought in granular detail, and therefore execution on what the market wants, what the customer needs, what competition is not doing, where the gaps are, and then executing relentlessly. And I think exceptional team and talent, and I think fantastic leadership by Hitesh. Hitesh has probably been spending the bulk of his time last couple of years on 99 acres, leading from the front, in the trenches. Thank you, Kaushik.

Next question from Vivek from Ambit Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask a question.

Yeah, I hope I'm audible. Yeah, you are. Yeah, so on recruitment, we hear of high-value jobs being generated, especially related to AI. Does this indicate a shift in the market to perhaps more premium but lower volume hiring? Hitesh, in this segment, is LinkedIn really a threat? That's the first one. The second one is on the non-IT segment. You did touch upon this in your answer to Sachin. There doesn't seem to be a very meaningful competitor to you here. So is it just a macro weakness or is there something that you believe you can do? More to accelerate growth. You've been putting in a lot of effort recently. You've tried to improve the quality of search, increase presence in tier two and three cities, and I think you're also offering free trials to SMEs. So just wanted your thoughts on the non-IT segment and what you can really do to accelerate growth. And the last one is on job head. What are the key metrics of success that you're tracking there? And where do you read the progress in regard to those metrics? And when do you see this becoming meaningful for your recruitment segment? Thank you.

You see, the premium segment, our sense is right now the premium market. And whenever I say premium, I mean, you know, people who earn more than, let's say, 25, 30 lakhs a year. That segment has been growing faster than the mid-level segment for the last few quarters. A lot of new jobs are being created in AI and machine learning, you know, data engineering and so on. But these are not, you know. Like, leadership-level jobs, right? These are not, like, jobs which pay crores and crore, two crore, three crores. There are some of those as well. But the bulk of the hiring is in the 20 lakh to, you know, the 40 lakh, 50 lakh segment. There, Nocree is reasonably strong. So, Nocree has significant market share in this segment. And both IAM jobs and hires are also reasonably strong in this segment. And of course, we are also doing a lot of work to improve our share in this segment. Yes, LinkedIn is a competitor. But LinkedIn is even stronger when you want to do very senior level hiring, when you want to hire people who are not looking for a job, people who are passive. We've also done a lot to improve our experience for these users and these customers. We've launched Nokia top tier on the job seeker side. We've launched premium X on the recruiter side. Here we've got Hyrist, which is our premium. You know, Ion Jobs is our premium MBA offering, and they're very strong. And we've grown Hyrist well over the last couple of years, and Hyrist has now significant share in the premium tech hiring market. So, we are, I think, We've been working hard to sort of improve our offerings in this segment and we are confident that we will continue to grow our share even in this segment going forward. So while this segment, I agree with you that this segment is going to grow faster than the mid-tier segment, but our share in this segment will continue to grow over time is what I feel right now. In the non-IT sort of market in segments, see what the market has slowed down a bit. That's our sense. We are doing, of course, a lot more than earlier. And not only have we expanded our coverage and our reach by opening more offices, setting up shop in more cities. We've launched freemium model to attract SMEs on the platform. We've... We are using machine learning to improve our AI models for matching for the non-ID segments we operate in. That's an ongoing thing, but slowly and steadily we're making progress on that front as well. There, I think the real issue is volume. I think the volume of hiring is not picking up as yet. Maybe it will in the next couple of quarters, who knows, but right now I think there is stress there. In the value segment or in the job sort of market, we are making very good progress. We were trying to get our model right. And we focused on Delhi NCR for some time. And I would, and today we are, I think, of course, there is competitors in this market are smaller in size, but we are leaders in traffic in Delhi NCR. And we've started monetizing now in Delhi NCR. And now we're taking this template to other cities. So this year, we will become a little more aggressive in Mumbai and Bangalore markets as well. The metrics we track are similar to what we track in Naukri, traffic, time spent on the platform, number of jobs, number of customers, you know, number of applications per job, stuff like that, right? And on all these metrics, we are making good progress. And of course, now we've started monetizing. It's a small business right now, but it's a startup. So we would like to grow it 100% year on year for the next few years. It will take some time to become a meaningful contributor to our revenue because the base is very small. But I think it's strategically very important for us. And it will help us tap into a brand new market, which can grow at a, you know, very high rate for several years. One of the companies in China, I don't know if you're familiar with Kanzun, they work with More than 6 million customers, and most of them are SMEs, about more than 40 or 50% of the revenue comes from SMEs. And they are very profitable, and they've grown, and they do over a billion dollars, I think, in revenue. It will take a few years. India is not that large. The Indian market is not that large. But I think that's the right model to follow for this segment. You know, there are several things which make this segment and this market different from the knock-free sort of market. And that's what Job is trying to solve.

Okay, thank you for the explanation. Just one clarification related to the opening comments. You said something about one-off 20 crore accrual in, was it in 99 acres? And does this impact your billing or revenue? Could you repeat that? I just couldn't understand.

Yes, that was the 99 acres. Basically, we had provided, we wrote back some earlier provision. And that did not impact billings, but it impacted revenue and also profit for this quarter. Vineet, do you want to elaborate on that?

Sure. So, Vivek, basically in 99 Acres, we have some small part of the business, which is cost per lead model. So, in that model, we were creating roughly around 20% as warranty provision, considering that for 20% of the leads, we will have to issue refunds to our customers in case the leads are not satisfactory. And then we over last eight quarters, we studied those trends. And then we came to conclusion that actual the refund that we have to issue is significantly lower than what we were building provision for. So as a result, we have made two changes. One, we reversed the extra provision, which was not used as of December in the last quarter. That led to some one-off, one-time gain. And second, going forward, instead of creating this 20% provision, we will be now provisioning it at 5%. So these are two changes. So that led to around 20 crore of higher revenue in this quarter, which obviously has flowed down to profitability as well. But that was more like one of in this quarter in 99 acres.

Okay, understood. So then this quarter's billing performance is not impacted by that. It's only revenue and segmental PB2.

So billings have already been accounted for. So this is already been, it's already part of billings. But think of it that way that you collect 10 rupees from a customer for this kind of business. But for recognizing revenue, you were taking 20%, which is 2 rupees as provision and 8 rupees are going to revenue. Right. So that two over the last few quarters combined the value of that equivalent of two, we have reversed it back in this quarter.

Okay. And okay, that's great. So this performance of 1.9%. Billing growth was, you mentioned that there is some change in the way you are carrying out the business, which is why it was lower, right?

Yes, yes. We undertook some changes in our sales organization and we tightened some processes around, you know, basically, you know, billing is invoicing, right? So we've tightened controls around, you know, invoicing into the future and stuff like that, right? You know, customers are willing to pay us in advance, and we've sort of clamped down on some of those things. And I think this is a good thing to do, and it'll help us in the future. We'll have a one-time transitional impact on Q4 Billings.

Okay, so this is not likely to repeat in the next coming quarters, is it? The one-time impact that you mentioned about. Because logically, last year's base will have, let's say, those advanced collections, but now perhaps you're not going to collect money in advance, even if customer wants to pay.

Yeah, we basically tightened the controls around all this. A bit.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Vivek. Next question from Kunal from Banyantri. Kunal, go in and ask a question.

Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity. My first question was on job. Can you talk about the competition there? We've looked at Apna and a couple of other places. What is their business model? Is it similar to us? Like, I understand they have been monetizing as well. If you can throw some light on how, you know, we are thinking to monetize. That was on job there. Second was on in 99 acres, when you say this one time adjustment that happened in this quarter about the ride back, then like from a sustainable point of view, what is, how should one look at the profitability of, you know, like, what is the impact on the profitability because of that? And is it that, you know, the profit number that we're seeing may not be sustainable in Q1? That is the second. And third, like we've been talking about the job seeker as a, you know, product being growing at a fast rate. Can you, you know, talk more about which are the sectors in which the relevance has increased? Any, you know, more nuance on, you know, which kind of job seekers are finding the product more, you know, beneficial or it is across broad base for all the sectors? These are the things with me. Thanks.

Yeah, so our business model in Jogha is not very different from APNA and Work India, you know, except that perhaps we are more freemium than they are, you know, so we allow you to list for free, and then we charge only in some markets and in some categories. Like I said, you know, our focus right now has been, or at least for the last few quarters, has been to... Get our product market fit right and to become a clear leader on traffic in NCR and now that we've achieved that objective, we are trying to monetize more aggressively in NCR and we're taking this template to other markets, but the model is not very different from Work India for sure. Overall model. 99 Acres, because the provision has been reversed, it resulted in 20 crores of extra revenue in Q4, and that has flowed to the bottom line as well. It's a one-time, it's not expected to occur again. And as far as job seeker offerings go, you know, We've launched, you know, so the 360 offerings on Okri are for all segments, and for all categories, and for all kinds of job seekers. And we've seen growth across the board. It's broad-based. We've seen higher growth across all segments, across all categories. Okay, sure. Thank you.

Thanks, Kunal. Next question from Sapnil from GM Financial. Sapnil, go ahead and ask a question.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. My first question is with respect to your deferred sales growth numbers. And it seems that there has been a significant dissolution in those strains across all your segments. Does that mean that your revenue for the next year, right across all the segments, would see a significant dip because the deferred sales number itself is down? And when we look at it from a growth perspective, last year it was 18% in Okri, for example, and now down to 12%. Thank you.

Sorry, Vinit, you want to take that?

So, see, deferred sales revenue is a function of billings growth. Last year, when you looked at the higher deferred sales number, because last year in S2, the growth rate of Naukri business billings was actually higher. So, quarter three, Naukri grew at 15%, quarter four, it grew at 18%. So, therefore, the deferred sales buildup was also higher, and therefore, the flow through to revenue was higher. Therefore, this year, you see higher revenue growth. Thank you. Yeah, some part of it, what you mentioned is right, that this year, because billings relatively slowed down vis-a-vis last year's second half, so that effect will flow through to a revenue of FY27. Like, basically, the way we, like, you know, the way we account billings into revenue is, it is amortized over 365 days. So that flow through will happen. Another thing to note is that, like Tej mentioned, our candidate services business, B2C business, that's going faster. So there, the tenure of the product is shorter. So like in Nokri, typically, you'd sell for 12 months, revenue gets recognized over 12 months. In B2C business, and that business is going faster, there, generally, the plans are three months, six months, one month. So the recognition is quicker. So there, the flow-through of billings to revenue is immediate. So that also plays a part. So it's a mix of both.

The second question is with respect to your B2C revenue growth only. I mean, this particular item has grown at around 33%, a significant number. Any particular reason that this growth is visible right now and it was not earlier? Any changes that you would have done in your proposition for the candidates?

Yeah, we've done a whole bunch of things. So we've launched a lot of new offerings. Some of them are AI-led. You know, like I spoke about AI resume makers, AI mock interviews, AI agents for job seekers. And two, also we made the model more self-serve. So, you know, earlier there was a lot of selling involved, as in, you know, telecalling and, you know, now there's a lot of self-serve and that's also helped us sort of grow our revenue faster.

Okay. And any forward-looking guidance on this particular piece, can you, if you can, how do you expect your business to grow?

You know, to be honest, I've also been surprised myself. You know, this business used to grow at 18-20% per year, but after making these changes, it's now started growing at 30%, but it's only been one quarter. Now, of course, the team is very bullish, but let's see if this sustains.

Got it. And just the last thing on the employee cost side. So for the last couple of quarters, I think there has been some dip in your employee count. And that has led to a bit of margins also. Are there any specific measures that you have taken to drive some efficiency gains over there?

You know, so everybody wants to use more AI inside InfoEdge also. So every time they ask for an AI budget, we also tell them to, you know, sort of, you know, just like, you know, our customers, we've also been telling them, listen, can you, hopefully you become more efficient and more productive if you're using, since you're using AI now. So, you know, we've implemented a lot of, so there are some, I don't know, there are hundreds of AI projects going on in the company right now as we speak. And I'm sure we're getting some efficiency because of what we're doing inside the company, because we're using these tools, because we're doing things, you know, in a much more efficient manner than earlier. We don't expect a major reduction in headcount going forward. You know, we've just sort of... But, yeah, people are becoming more productive than earlier because of these tools. We have not laid off anyone or anything of that sort. But we are just encouraging everyone to sort of do a little more than what they were doing earlier.

Yeah, if I can just comment there. I think there's generally an efficiency drive within the company to just look at virtually every new hire or a rehire very, very closely. So there's a strong emphasis to just ensure that every hire is adding value. And your other point about the job seeker business growing strongly, to some extent, this might be a function of just counter cyclical to what's happening in the economy. Generally, with a slowing job hiring market, you're bound to see a little bit more inbound interest in the services which we offer for job seekers, the paid services. So, yeah, I think, you know, that's a function of... You know, what's happening broadly in the hiring trends in the economy.

Just a quick clarification. I mean, what would be the contribution from this jobseeker services to your overall billings?

So the jobseeker business, I think revenue last year was about 176 crores. Yeah, that's right. 67% of the billings.

67. Yeah. Very helpful.

See, full-year growth is only 19%. Not 6 to 7.

6 or 7%.

6 to 7%. Full-year growth, even in the job seeker business, was only 19%. It's only in Q4 that it grew by 33%.

Understood. Very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Anand. Anand, there is a question in chat box. Should we first take that? We can take that. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Sandeep, this is for you. So, there is a question from Avnisha. What is the aim behind starting two new funds, Karkar Duma Trust and V8? You'd like to pick that one.

Yeah, so... See, one is to a fund which we are investing in growth stage. We felt that there was opportunity there. We had the capital. We had the team to utilize the capital and the opportunity. And one is to continue to invest in deep tech. So we had got earlier invested in deep tech through our subsidiary of InfoEdge called Redstart, then through. A fund called Capital 2B. And when that fund ran out of first-check money, we decided to allocate a fresh pool of capital, and that's how you're doing these two funds.

Yeah, thanks. So next question is from Prateek from HSBC. Prateek, go ahead and ask your question.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. So, my question was to Hitesh on the hiring sentiment. So, thank you for the color earlier. Just wanted to follow up on that. How are you seeing the sentiment over the, let's say, six months? Is it improving? Is it worse? In the IT business, what we are looking at, if you look at the LTM attrition trends, right, probably in the last two quarters, it has fallen a bit, right? So, and this is a trailing 12-month attrition that we get from IT companies, so probably from the fall, it's actually a higher fall, right? Even we are hearing at GCC companies, you also mentioned that there's a phenomenon called job-hugging, right, because of how everything is happening around AI. So, first, I wanted to understand, like, how are you looking at sentiment? Is it improving, stable, or has deteriorated from last six months? Yeah, I have a follow up question after that.

Yeah, I would say it's been like stable. But, you know, so if you look at jobs peak also, I think it's been like in that 456% range. So yeah, so I would say it's been like stable more in some markets in some sectors, maybe there's more hiring happening than earlier. But on the whole, there's not much improvement.

And it is, I think earlier you had to, you used to mention about the margins, right? The way the business would grow for Nokri and the way you think about the margins, right? Obviously, the growth has slowed a bit, right? So how should we think about margins, right? Would have you guys probably changed the thoughts there and probably margins will sustain as they were in 3Q and 4Q? So it should be that kind of margin should we look at or probably something changes?

See, there are two big areas where we are still investing in our recruitment business. One is job and the other is AI. And we don't want to starve these two areas of investment. So we'll continue to invest in both job and AI. Important for us for the long term. Now, my sense is that if we are able to grow our top line by. You know, in double digits, you know, margins. Margin should, but the margin should remain the same. So if you're able to grow at 10% or more, you should be able to maintain margin in Nokri. And if we grow faster than that, then margins may be, margins could get better going forward. If we, on the other hand, if the Convy slows down further and, you know, Nokri grows at 7-8%, then, you know, it'll be hard to sort of, then we may sort of lose a little bit of margin in the short term.

Yeah. And Hitesh, also on your 99 acres business, I understand 4Q was one of aberration. However, before that, you guys were growing at somewhere around mid-15% billing growth. And also now you have a higher market share. Commentary is a lot more bullish. Should we start building in higher than 15% growth? Do you think that would be a right estimate for next year? And should we start seeing that from the first quarter itself?

See, it's easier to make projections about what could happen over the next three, four, five years and about what will happen next quarter, right? But our goal in 99 acres, actually, our goal should be, if you ask me, given where we are today, because we made substantial gains in share over the last few quarters, we should now be aiming to get to 60% share. That should be our first goal. And revenue, like I said, will follow with the lag and we'll be in gaining share for a few quarters. And I think the business should now, I mean, our billing last year was about 497, 498 crores. We should aim to at least double our business, if you ask me, over the next three years. And if we are able to do that, then, you know, we should be able to generate at least a 25 to 30% EBITDA margin as well, right? That should be our medium-term goal in 99 acres. We have an opportunity. It's a large market. We are, after a long time, clear leaders. You know, our competition is struggling. And we have momentum. We've had a hiccup in Q4. Hopefully, things will get back on track in Q1. In the short term, the market will slow down a little bit. Something else may happen, God knows. But over a three, four year period, I think we have now laid the foundation of building a second, a solid second vertical inside InfoEdge. And the team is also confident that they can deliver. And, you know, in these kind of businesses, once you get this kind of lead over your competitors, it's not easy for others, for them to catch up. So, medium term, this should be our goal, at least in my view.

And last one, so I know you guys are a little conservative on M&A, but in this area of 99 acres, would you guys also be open to kind of consider if there is any M&A opportunities, right? Just to kind of put the industry structure where Naukri's business environment is, right? So would you be okay doing that?

Yeah, I mean, at the right price for the right asset, why not?

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Pradeek. Vivek from Ambit Capital has a follow-up question. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.

Thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. Number one is on AIRx. Itesh, last time you had spoken about some of the mandates that you got on AIRx and how you are now taking it to more and more customers. I just wanted to understand better in terms of client adoption and willingness to pay. Have you initiated those conversations yet? Anything that you would like to share? On this one, that's number one. The second one is appreciate the rich color you gave on Nigeria and equals. Just wanted to understand whether the traffic share gains also help you in the new home segment or is it primarily lead gen for brokers which get stronger and stronger. And further to this question, if you can answer what else are you doing in the new home segment? which can help you gain share from the horizontal media portals, global media portals. Thank you.

Yeah, no, ARX, so, you know, we've been working on our agentic offerings for a while, and we were sort of figuring out the go-to market. So initially, we tried to, we did a pilot with a few customers, and we tried to sell these offerings to a few recruit, but that was creating a lot of friction, and it was taking a lot of time. B2B adoption is harder, you know, B2C is easier. So we've changed our approach, and now. And what we've done is we've made AIRX available for free to a lot of recruiters on our platform. And we are encouraging them to try it out, to sample, to see the difference. Our whole pitch is, listen, AIRX is going to turn recruiters into super recruiters. So that's the positioning of the agentic AI offering. It can help make recruiters become more productive and do their job faster and better. And that's the approach we're taking right now. And we are seeing. You know, it's a new offering. So like any new offering, there are some early adopters. And we are seeing that on the platform now. So close to a few hundred customers have already have recruiters, lots of hundreds of recruiters have been experimenting with it. And some are using it, of course, a lot more than others. And close to 30,000 mandates have now gone through AIRX. The product also is under constant development. We're trying to improve as we get feedback from clients. So now this is something which we're very excited about because, you know, again, early days, it's a new offering. We don't know whether it will succeed. But if it succeeds, then again, it increases time for us, right? Because like we've said this in the past, you know, in our heads, we targeted take rate of 1% from our clients. But if we are able to make recruiters more productive, then this take rate can actually go up over time, right? So even if hiring volumes won't grow, you know. You know, our revenue can still grow. But it's early days. But we're very excited about this offering. And fingers crossed on this one. Similarly, we've launched, you know, and this is this the Talent Pulse offering is a little older because we launched it a while back. But as we get more and more data and as we get more and more better in modeling, you know, our offering is improving. So again, in Talent Pulse. What we're doing now is we're making it, we're monetizing it, and we have a lot of revenue from Talent Pulse. We did about 30-35 crores last year from our Talent Pulse offering. We are making it available to more customers, so they can try it out. And we've launched new variants. And again, this is a business we think we can grow much faster than the overall Knockery business. And again, it increases the time for us. So these two offers we're very excited about. Additionally, we've also launched PremiumX. uh, uh, premium search inside Knockree. Uh, early days, that's, that's free right now. We're not charging for it, but the idea there is to grow our share of the premium hiring market because that market, like I mentioned, is probably growing faster than the, uh, mid-level, uh, mid-tier hiring market right now. Uh, so, you know, again, very easy, difficult to say what, what's going to happen in the short term, but over a three-year period, uh, you know, it'd be great if you can We can make a few hundred crores of incremental revenue from these offerings. That would be our aim. So, in the 99 acres business, new home business, yes, when you grow your share of the secondary market, the new home revenue also grows because a small percentage of users, of buyers on the platform are open to both, right? So, when they come to the platform, they're not sure whether they want to buy the new home or ready to move in sort of apartment. And therefore, a percentage of them end up sort of becoming leads for our new home clients as well. So, so that, you know, so as you gain higher, and then of course, also the new home advertisers, because as you gain more market share, you know, they see you as a platform, which they need to be on, right? Because that's where all the, all the traffic is. So it helps. Of course, you need to, you know, keep working on your new home offerings. And to answer your question around what are we, what extra are we doing on that front? See, one of the things we're excited about is our 99 Shorts offering. We rolled it out in NCR. We worked very hard last year to launch this offering in NCR. It's like... Think of it as an Instagram of real estate projects. And so, you know, you can see apartments, you can see get details of projects, walkthroughs, it's all video, right? So, you know, so you can, it's almost like getting a test drive of a new car, you know, sitting in your home, you can see projects and you can see apartments and you can see, you can hear residents talk about, you can view resident reviews. and stuff like that. So, early days, it's been, but I like the content. You can try it out yourself. We are going to take it to more cities this year. If this product takes off. Then this could dramatically change the experience for new homes on 99 acres for our users. And if that happens, and if you become a destination site for new homes, and if we become the place where people start their new home search like we are for ready-to-move-ins apartments, then, you know, this business could. You know, grow much faster than it has grown over the last few years. Separately, we're also working on using, we have a large database of both owners and buyers on our platform. And we are working on, we are trying to leverage AI to sort of do a better job of reaching out to these people on our platform for new launches. But that's early days on that one. But I think even that will sort of work out in the medium term for us. So we are working on a bunch of offerings in new homes. Our response, like I said, in Q4 for new homes was up 33% YOY.

Great. Thank you, Hitesh, for those detailed answers. All the very best.

Thank you, Vivek. And Vinit, that was the last question for the evening we had.

Great. Thank you, everyone. On behalf of InfoEdge, we now conclude this conference call. You may disconnect the lines. Thank you for joining.

Thank you, everyone. Have a great evening. Yeah, bye.

Thank you so much, everyone. See you next time.