Brainbees Solutions Ltd (NSE: FIRSTCRY) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 26, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Supam Maheshwari — Managing Director
Gautam Sharma Brooke — Chief Financial Officer
Vivek Goyal — Chief Business Officer
Abhinav Sharma
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Vidisha Sher — Analyst
Sachin Dixit — Analyst
Sachin Salgaonkar — Analyst
Garima — Analyst
Madhav Yadav — Analyst
Nigel — Analyst
Chintan — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Foreign. Good evening everyone. Welcome to Brainbee Solution Limited Q4 and financial year 2025 earnings call. This is Anish Aroda and I have with me Mr. Supam Maheshwari, Managing Director and CEO of the company, Mr. Gautam Sharma Brooke, Chief Financial Officer of the company, Mr. Vivek Goyal, Chief Business Officer of the company and Mr. Abhinav Sharma, Country Head of Middle East Business Operations. Kindly note that this call is meant for analysts and investors of the company. We wish to highlight that the call is being recorded and by participating in this event you consent to such recording, distribution and publication.
All participants have been muted as per the default mode and participants will be unmuted once we open the Q and A forum for the members to ask questions. After the presentation of the management concludes. We will be covering the presentation in the beginning of the call and we will thereafter open the Q and A forum. We would like to point out that some of the statements made in today’s call may be forward looking in nature and the disclaimer to this effect has been included in the investor presentation shared with you. With this I request Mr.
Supermaneshwari to take it over.
Supam Maheshwari — Managing Director
Sam yeah. Good evening everyone. Thanks for joining our quarterly and Q4 quarterly earnings presentation as well as fiscal year ending March 31st, 2025. Today we have reserved 1 1/2 hours as we would like you to take through a little more detailed dive on our business. Some more nuances that you have not seen in the past. Want to reiterate for some of the members who may have joined you First Cry as a company is a baby’s first cry a special moment for parents and at First Cry we always aim to make this and every all such moments of the parenting journey filled with joy and happiness.
This is our mission that we continue to, you know maintain and do every every activity towards accomplishing this mission. Today we will be covering the following agenda items. We’ll be covering our entire fiscal year 252425 financial performance along with quarter four JFM and we’ll also be covering our segments four business segments at India Multi Channel Business which is core of our business and international business. Then global Bees and then other segments. All four of these we’ll be covering and then we’ll also talk about our financial summary or console performance of the total company. Moving further, let’s just deep dive into our Entire Fiscal year 2425 performance.
Fiscal year 25 we are happy to report a very strong growth, momentum and improvement in profitability for the full year FY25 over 24. As you can see this console performance revenue of the company you know as at a console level increased 18% over FY24 becoming around 7,600 crores of revenue from operations. Gross margin has continued to increase with 159 bips year on year expansion to 23% versus FY24 and adjusted EBITDA adjusted for ESOP cost has also increased 90 bps year on year expansion with 43% absolute increase over from FY24 and this in percentage terms means around 5.13 in FY25 over 4.2 in FY24.
Also happy to report overall cash profit after tax increase of 209 crores which is 96% increase over last year and super happy to report that India multi channel business turned pat as well as cash free flow positive in FY25 and we remain very very optimistic and the entire team will be working super hard to deliver both on growth and profitability expansion across all our business segments. This is a new slide where we are disclosing gross margins for our different four segments which earlier we used to report at a console level. So here if you will see all our four business segments we’ve been continuing to increase for the entire fiscal year revenue as well as gross margin expansion and as well as adjusted ebitda.
So if you look at India multi channel revenue increase around 15% over last year, gross margin improved 20% over last year with 149bps improvement year on year and adjusted EBITDA with 24% increase over last year. International also had 14% increase of revenue from operations gross margin improvement of 13%. We’ll be talking about in detail some of the all four business segments so you’ll get a more detailed color of the year as well as of the quarter and our adjusted EBITDA also had close to 140 crores of adjusted EBITDA losses which is similar to around FY24.
Global BEES had a 30% improvement in revenue terms over last year and Gross margin improved 36%. Absolute 186bps increase and adjusted EBITDA improved 856% over last year to 22 crores with 121bps improvement year on year. Others which is primarily our preschool business, another good year of performance with 42 crores of revenue with expansion of gross margin and almost 10 crores of adjusted EBITDA with leading close to around 24% of adjusted EBITDA over last year of 17.5%. So all four business segments have done fairly well for us for the year for the Q4 performance as well.
If you look at our annual unique transacting customer which essentially includes our India Multichannel International business improved 17% for the trailing 12 months ending March 25 over 24 improved by 17%. GMV which is accounting for India multi channel and international increased by 14% over last Q4 of FY24 and revenue from operation increased 16% which includes other business segments as well. Console EBITDA adjusted ebitda improved for Q4 at 20% increase over Q4FY24 which represent almost close to 5.2%. And India multi channel adjusted EBITDA improved, you know 17% over Q4 which essentially was 9.3% over 8.9% cash profit, a whopping increase of 484% over Q4 over Q4 to almost 69 crores for the Q4.
Now with that I would like Gautam Sharma, sorry Vivek Goel will take you through our India multi channel business and I would like to state that a lot of you know earlier calls you had request of certain more disclosures of some of our business. You know I would say performances of certain metrics. This time around we are sharing a little more nuance around some of our quality. I mean some of those disclosures which will help you to understand and appreciate our business in a little more detailed way. So I will request Vivek to take you through some of the slides may be repetitive for some of you because the modes will remain same.
But since we have more disclosure you will have a far more appreciation of the quality of the business that we are building. So Vivek over to you.
Vivek Goyal — Chief Business Officer
Thank you Supam. So as Supam mentioned in the next few slides I’ll take you through some of the important modes of the business along with some additional information which will help you appreciate what we are building as a business. So as you already know that we are the largest multi channel retailer for mothers, babies and kids products in India. For total GMV of multi channel business, India multi channel business 78% comes from online and 22% of this GMV comes from our offline stores. Happy to report that this year we crossed 10 million annual unique transacting customers.
Also want to mention that of a total modern stores offline stores, almost 45% of our stores are baby hug or first cry company owned stores. So as a business we bring in a very unique proposition as compared to any other retail format, which is where we have both online and offline strengths. And if you really see that our business and Sukham has mentioned in past few calls as well that our business lends very beautifully for an omnichannel or multi channel kind of a retail format because there are all kinds of customers who want to buy things with experience as well as they want to buy it with convenience.
So we serve both. And over a period of time, if you really see if we really see our data, there are a lot of consumers who start purchasing with us in an offline store and eventually becomes a very loyal online customer. At the same time, a lot of our consumers actually discover us online and they continue to purchase in the nearby offline store as well. So a testimony of that is that of the total GMV generated In the top 20 cities for us, almost 38% of GMV comes from these cross channel customers. The customers who buy both in online as well as offline stores.
Anish, if you can move to the next slide. So if I would say that mothers of a young baby is the busiest person in the world as a team in first cry, we really appreciate that fact and we strive to make things easier for them when they come and browse our apps. So one of the most important things we have done is we have personalized our app basis the age and gender of a child. So for example, if you are a mom of a six month old girl, you would see a completely different homepage as compared to a mom of a 10 year old boy.
So for example, a mom of a six month old girl would see products like musical toys or strollers being promoted on our homepage. Whereas a mother of a 10 year old might see remote control cars and school supplies kind of products which are more relevant for them. On top of this we also personalize our app on multiple other accesses which would include consumer behavior as well as regional nuances. For example, if I would give you a very recent example, monsoons are slowly progressing across the country. So some of the states in South India might see our product selection as well as the promotion selection more conducive to monsoons.
Whereas certain other regions which are still reeling under the heat would see a lot more summer related product selection and promotion. So this curation and personalization really help some other in terms of making the right choices for the babies and easier for them. We apply some of these learnings of personalization also in our offline stores. So as a brand we address the babies and kids needs across age groups Through a wide variety of assortment which is almost 1.8 million strong in terms of SKUs which are offered across over 8,000 brands. So a typical journey of our consumer or the moms starts from the pregnancy and continues till the time their oldest child is 12 years old on first cry.
So when we started our business at that time our focus was more in the age group of -9 months to 3 years or till the time the child was 3 years. A few years back we expanded our selection to cater to the needs of up to 6 year old child and subsequently we expanded it to the age group of 12 years. So also want to mention that as a brand and as a retailer we are very fashion focused and that could be seen in terms of the ratio of fashion business in First Cry. So we offer total GMV of multi channel India business.
52% of our GMV comes from baby and kids fashion which includes apparel and footwear categories. All the other categories which contribute to about 48% of our business are powered by almost 300,000 strong inventory selection SKU selection. So this slide we have added to give you a little more color in terms of stickiness and long term cohorts of First Dry customers. So if I would try to attempt to explain it to you. So in fiscal year 2013 in the acquisition year, if a consumer gave us a GMV of 1x over a period of 12 years till the time over the period of 12 years we end up generating almost 7.9x GME from the same consumer.
And that was for fiscal year 13 if you see this report vertically as well. So for example till year four column which is five years post year of acquisition, in fiscal year 2017 the number increased from 3.4x to 3.7x. And for the consumers who are acquired in fiscal year 2021, this number for the first five years of revenue increased to 4x. So over a period of time we can clearly see that the business has demonstrated increasing stickiness and as I mentioned that the 6 to 12 months age group that we have launched sometime back is still to be completely baked into these long term cohorts.
So we expect these numbers to further continue to improve over a period of time. So this is another very important moat as a brand that we have built which is the collection of highly curated home brand portfolios. We have built some of the most iconic brands in India when it comes to baby and kids products, which some of them include Baby hug, Pine Kids, Q2 Walk and BBOA. So what period of time what we have seen is our home brands have grown at a much faster rate as compared to the first try GMV. So for example in FY20 the GMV the contribution of home brands to first grad GMV was 37%.
In fiscal year 25 the contribution crossed 55%. The revenue coming from home brands cost 55% of our total GMV. So one of couple of very important benefits and strengths that First Cry home brands bring in is first that in a market which is highly fragmented, home brands bring in a curated and high quality, much better quality as compared to the market which helps in better consumer retention as well as the home brands at the second level also help us expand our gross margins. So amongst our home brands you already know that Baby Hug is the largest mothers, babies and kids product brand.
We are the largest in terms of selection in Asia Pacific or assortment in Asia Pacific if you exclude China. And we are also largest multi category mothers, babies and kids product brand in terms of gmv. So in the next few slides I’ll show so over period of our journey we have built a lot of important marketing strategies and modes for us which have helped us in being very prudent with our marketing costs or optimize our acquisitions as well as increase the retention of our consumers. I’ll discuss couple of them in the next few slides. One of them is one of the most unique things that we have built from our strategies is that we have built we are one of the unique apps to have commerce and community in the same mobile application.
So we operate the India’s largest and most engaged parenting community in our app which is also called First Cry Parenting. So First Cry Parenting has educational information provides educational information to the moms which is both professional generated content and also user generated content. We also provide very important tools which are required by the mothers during the parenting journey like immunization schedule tracker, growth. Tracker. Q and A as well as content which is video as well as text and a lot of this content is actually personalized basis the child’s age so that the mother again as I mentioned earlier doesn’t have to waste their time in looking for the stuff they don’t need. So parenting actually helps us in consumer acquisitions on one end as well as retention during the most important formative years of a consumer coming on our platform. The second and very important strategy that we have is the hospital gift box program. So this is a long standing partnership with hospitals.
Some of those partnerships go as back as 13 to 14 years. We are partnered with almost 13,000 plus clinics and hospitals across the country where we distribute almost two and a half million boxes a year at the time of baby birth. So this is very important because the time of baby birth is one of the most emotional moment for all parents and it is the perfect point of market entry for a brand like fast. Right. And just to give you a color about the scale that we operate this program at, so we cover almost about 10% of baby births in the country through this program. So now I’ll hand over to Gautam to take us through the financial numbers for multi channel business.
Gautam Sharma Brooke — Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Vivek. So this talks about this slide talks about the growth in annual unique transacting customers, GMV and orders. We continue to see a very healthy growth in our AUTC in March over last year March. This is a 12 month trading number. Orders in GMB has almost similar growth for FY25 or FY24 which is 16%. And the Q4 growth in orders as well as GMV is around 14%. This is you know a slightly impact in Q4. It got slightly impacted because of three reasons. One is we have witnessed some slowdown especially in the offline business.
The second reason is we have seen a truncated winter. We talked about it last time that there was a late start of winters and in fact it ended early. So that is one of the reason because you know because of that the GMB has got moderated. And third one is we all know that we have closed a few company owned stores in fiscal 25. These are the three reasons because of which GMV growth and order growth got moderated. In Q4 revenue growth for full year is 15% and for the Q4 over Q4 it is 12%.
Again the moderation is because of the reasons I just explained. However we continue to improve the EBITDA for the India multi channel business both on quarter on quarter and year on year. So FY25 EBITDA. You see this is adjusted for ESOP cost. It has gone to 9.5% from 8.8% in FY24 and it represents around 24% growth year on year. Similarly if we talk about the Q4FY25 EBITDA numbers it is 9.3% compared to 8.9% in Q4FY24. This represents a 17% year on year growth. Now I will let Abhinav Sharma who heads our Middle east operations to take you through the international business slides.
Abhinav Sharma
Thank you Gautam and hello everybody and thanks for joining us on this call this evening. I’ll Quickly walk you over the international business. Where we started, when we started and why we started. What’s the journey look like so far? As you can see here, a very compelling reason why we initiated or started our business in both geographies in the Middle East, KSA and uae. As you can see KSA birth rates are even higher than India and the spends per child to top that up is about 8 times higher as compared to India and about 17 times higher in UAE as compared to India. So very compelling reasons for us to be present here in both the markets. And it represents a large market opportunity for us as well as very favorable demographics. Anish, go to the next slide please. So our journey thus far, you know we started first in UAE in October 2019 and subsequently in KSA in August 22nd. And the basic tenant of our business in both markets internationally has been replicating a very well defined and evolving sort of a playbook that India business has created over the last 15 years. And so you can see the, you know we are online only right now in UAE and ksa, both the markets we are operating as a pure play e commerce player in our world. And the average order values in the international segment is more than four times that of India average order value as of now.
This is a very important slide. This shows you how the gross margin values or gross margin percentage has evolved in both the markets, India as well as international in certain timestamps in India, as you can see we started in FY11 and after seven years we clocked a GM of 24% in the international business. We’ve completed about four years now and we are very similar in terms of the GM percentage. So the playbook impact that I was talking about in the previous slide, obviously it has a lot of levers to speak of. A few of the levers in terms of margin expansion that has played out in India that you can see, you know in year 14 a spectacular 36.6%, you know, clocked of GM percentage.
The increase in share of home brands in the GMV is one lever share of fashion which is kids and babies fashion in gmv, better home brand and third party margins due to economies of scale and of course operational efficiencies. Now these are some of the levers that the India playbooks handed over to us which are also in play in the international market. Gautam, over to you.
Gautam Sharma Brooke — Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Thanks Abhinav. So again similar to the slides we presented for the India multi channel business, this represents the growth in AUTC orders and GMV. AUTC has increased 14% Q4 over Q4. However the growth in orders slightly got moderated in Q4 and even full year. So we talked about few horizontals. During our last earning call we talked about few horizontals entering the Middle east region. That competitive intensity continues in Q4 as well and that has been impacted slightly. The growth in orders as well as the growth in overall gmv. Next slide please. Moving on to the revenue from operations, it has grown by 14% in FY25 or FY24.
However the growth in Q4 FY25 is little lower. It got moderated because of the reasons I just explained the competition reason. However, the clear focus is on improving the profitability and sustainable growth. You can see from the EBITDA numbers, the full year EBITDA numbers it has come down from minus 19% in FY24 to minus 16% in FY25 while the losses in absolute terms remains more or less same. But we strongly believe that the peak losses now are behind us and we will continue to reduce the EBITDA burn both in terms of absolute value and absolute percentage quarter on quarter.
Moving forward over to you supam.
Supam Maheshwari — Managing Director
So on global Bees front I think as this is a little familiar slide, we continue to operate in our four segments, Home improvement utilities, home appliances, active lifestyle accessories and home and personal care. As you know we haven’t acquired any business since September 22nd. So all our growth post that has been totally organic. Now if you look at our performance for the full year FY25 over FY24 it is 30% going up to yeah, going up to 1577 crores. And for the Q4 we grew by 33% Q4 over Q4. And in terms of adjusted EBITDA, as you can see we continue to improve our gesture EBITDA because this business is three and a half year old and in fact first year went around in priming the engine with lot of category acquisitions that we did.
So really the business is fairly young for it to be able to result into a more mature ebitda. But as you can see we continue to improve our EBITDA year on year quarter on quarter basis where for the full fiscal year we have demonstrated 1.4% EBITDA over last same fiscal year it was 0.2% and likewise for the quarter where negative 0.3% has become 0.7% positive. So these are still early days. Company continues to do business segment continues to do very well both in terms of the growth and expansion of EBITDA is yet to materialize in a meaningful way.
If you look at this is a little more detailed color on on the Global Bees. If you look at some of these segments for FY24 and FY25, all the we have client tried to classify into five segments although we just talked about four segments. So we have our core four segments which is home improvement utilities in darker pink, slightly lesser pink home appliances and very light pink on home and personal care and active life and accessories. These are our core sort of brands have continued to expand. Other brands which we have deliberately slowed down and we believe because of certain evolution curve that have.
If you look at even the right hand side, the adjusted EBITDA from the core brands has been around 7 and a half percent and from the other brands minus 31%. And the share of these other brands is reducing from 14% in FY24 to 8% in FY25 as a deliberate strategy. So over time as the other brands piece of the business reduces and we will attempt at making it EBITDA neutral over a period of time while improving our focus on the core brands which has a disproportionate growth high growth than the overall business growth of 30% year on year.
So it will mean a very meaningful outcome as you can imagine that over next few years as we move along the other brands reduces in size and the and the adjusted EBITDA for those reduces in percentage terms as well. Effectively our Global Bees as a business will deliver a lot more EBITDA in terms of the bottom line both at a consolidated brand adjusted EBITDA. And we believe we will obviously improvise on our corporate expenses and delivering a superior performance on the overall Global bees adjusted EBITDA from 1.4% going forward to a much healthier number over few quarters and years to come.
So I hope this gives you a little more deeper color on some of these were asked in questions that you had in the prior calls. Therefore we thought to share this additional piece of information. I would now request Gautam to talk about the other segments and console performance.
Gautam Sharma Brooke — Chief Financial Officer
So this so other category largely includes our preschool business. So we have a strong growth in preschool partnership across 160 cities now. And you can see the preschool numbers. You know number of operational preschools from 105 in FY23. We have increased this to 208 in FY24. And now we have 363 operational schools. You can see a healthy jump in the number of students enrolled as well for FY25. It is 18,470 students who are who have enrolled in our schools. Revenue continue to improve. From 33 crore rupees we have posted a revenue of 42 crore rupees for FY25.
And the same thing is with EBITDA. We continue to improve our EBITDA from negative 13% in FY23. We have now reached to EBITDA of 24%. This is about the console performance. All business segments put together. We are just refreshing, you know this slide in the form of graphical presentation which Supam has done initially. All four business segments, India Multi Channel Business which is the core international, global Bees and others, all continue to grow their revenue and continue to improve their profitability year on year from 8.8% to 9.5%. India multi channel business from minus 19% to minus 16%.
In international business, global based business 0.2% to 1.4% and in our preschool business from 18% EBITDA to 24% EBITDA in FY25. As a result, combining these four segments, we get a 18% growth in our net revenue consolidate revenue for FY25 over FY24 and a 16% growth in our net revenue in Q4. FY25 over Q4 FY24. The green boxes in this graph are the console gross margins. So you can see those are also continuously improving. From 36.7% in Q4, FY24, we have improved this to 37.5%. And from 35.8% in FY24 we have improved this to 37.4% in FY25.
Likewise. Similarly, you know, we continue to improve the adjusted EBITDA as Well consolidated from 5% to 5.2% Q4 over Q4 and from 4.2% to 5.1% FY25 over FY24. This ends our presentation. Yeah, happy to take now questions.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you team. We can wait for a minute for the queue to get formed and then we can start with the Q and A. Q and A. I request participants to raise the hands for asking questions. We will unmute you one by one and you will have the access to the mic. Please introduce yourself and the name of the organization you represent. The participants are also requested to limit their questions to maximum 2. For any follow up questions. You may join the queue again. First question is from Vidisha. Vidisha, please unmute yourself.
Vidisha Sher
Hello. Hi. I hope I’m audible. Yes, Hi, this is Vidisha Sher. From Ambit Capital. Thank you for the opportunity and really appreciate the data points. My first question was if you can explain the gap between EUTC and the order growth that we’ve seen in both international and India businesses. You’ve talked about the reasons for subdued order growth, but going forward, what can be done to narrow the gap and when do you expect the order growth to be in line with the eutc? That was my first question. Okay, so if you talk about, I think AUTC growth with respect to.
Abhinav Sharma
You mean the order growth, right? I mean the. That’s what your question is?
Vidisha Sher
Yes.
Abhinav Sharma
If you look at India, the. You know the Delta is not that big. If you look at the full year picture, Disha, you have to put it on mute. I think there was. Yeah. So if you look at the full year picture Vidisha, you will not see, you know, what you’re seeing as the Delta is largely coming from certain slowdown that we experienced in our offline sort of a store network. The footfall leading to a lesser orders, lesser footfalls leading to lesser orders is what we experienced especially in January, February, which obviously got corrected in March with the season change.
If you look at pure online, while the slowdown has an impact on the customers coming back and ordering while the AUTC is registered, once it gets registered. And also if you look at the online growth, online GMV growth for the year FY24 23 or FY25 24, it remains 18%. And if you even look for Q4 online growth it is close to around 16% which we feel is a fairly good number in terms of the pure sort of an online.
Vivek Goyal
Just to add Vidisha, there is no major difference between the AUTC growth and the growth in number of borders in the India multi channel business. However, if you see the difference in the international business, it is as I mentioned earlier, we have seen a few competition entering the market in Q3. So that has led to a difference between the AUTC growth and the growth in the order. So while customers are coming in, but the frequency of those customers transacting, they may be doing some transaction on other sides because of higher discounts or whatever. So that’s the reason there is a big difference between the AUTC growth in the international business and the growth in the number of orders largely India multi business is more or less in line.
Vidisha Sher
Got it. That is helpful. And the second question was on the marketing spends, the ad spends are pretty elevated. So if you could elaborate on how should one think about it going forward.
Abhinav Sharma
So if you look at our console we share our total overall ad spends. Our ad spend. Because Global Bees as a business has a higher percentage of marketing cost compared to the rest of the three business segments, the share of that segment has increased. Therefore you see actually increase of the overall marketing spend. But we have ensured that we have a much superior expansion in the gross margin as a business overall so that we can retain and keep expanding our adjusted EBITDA appropriately.
So that way we have balanced a growth with profitability while sort of managing these two expectations. So one is more of a, I would say weighted average numerical sort of modeling and second is we ensured while we do that we continue to expand gross margin to be able to pull it down towards increase in EBITDA as well.
operator
Thank you Vidisha. Next question is from Sachin Dixit. Sachin, please unmute yourself.
Sachin Dixit
Yeah hi, hope you can hear me. Hi Supam Gautam and broader team. Thanks so much for the improved disclosures. My first question is at a slightly higher level, right. If you look at your businesses, obviously multiple businesses, segments, a lot of moving parts, what do you feel a lot more satisfied about sitting at the fiscal year close versus where do you think there’s a substantial effort that you need to still put in?
Abhinav Sharma
Sorry, I’m. I’m not even clear with your question.
Sachin Dixit
So my question is like if you look at your business performance, right, obviously you cannot be happy about everything.
Abhinav Sharma
So there might be pieces where you can tell me, okay Sachin, I’m very happy about this, this, this and this and this is where probably we need to do a lot more work going forward. So that’s the question largely. Look, I would say, you know we would be, I mean as you know, as you know, as a professional or as a, you know, a team leader, you know, our job is to be able to be remain sort of hungry and I think we feel that we should have delivered more both in India multi channel, even in international rest other two segments have done well.
We would want to expand our EBITDA margins faster in global base School business is small and although it’s doing well, I think both India multi channel especially in offline we believe we, I think we would like to see better performance and I also would color it with the way that opportunity fundamentally remains solid. There is a large untapped market, largely unorganized. We are the largest organized player. We are a true omnichannel or a multi channel player with thousand stores and a large amount of business coming online. None of our competitors are like us. So we Believe that the opportunity will be with us as it unfolds.
But yes, could we have done in FY25 more? We were doing fairly well and we believe our online has done quite well. We could have delivered more in offline in India multichannel. We have become more cautious in terms of capital efficiency and that’s why we will remain that way. But we believe in the longer run or medium term we should be able to pull back as overall consumer slowdown improves with some of the efforts by the government, some of our internal efforts that we have at our sleeve that we will unfold to be able to extract more growth both in India multichannel and in Middle East.
I think our focus will remain very, very profitable growth. We believe that while we had expected a little superior growth, but there’s no point in getting that growth at a higher cost or a higher burn. We rather believe that the way we have played out our story in India when some of these horizontals were there, especially in times like 20 to 2017 when we played out similar moats are getting built up in a similar way in terms of gross margin expansion which Abhinav talked about, what we delivered in seven years in India, we delivered in four years.
So I think once our home brand get acknowledged and get penetrated in those markets, we will continue to see superior adoption curve and improvement in cohorts, improvement in quality of customers that we will onboard and so on so forth. Some of these metrics will improve and the long term journey going to remain with us. The way we have charted out short term we might feel little unhappy about the growth that we are demonstrating because of some external reasons. So those are the two large points that I will color up. Rest and I think everything how we have anticipated is playing out in the way that the moats are structured.
They’re very fundamental and that will continue to compound for next 10 years or 20 years. That’s very, very helpful. Supam, my second question is on the franchisee network side, right? Obviously we have not seen any growth in the number of stores in the last six odd quarters. So what is happening there? Is it you not proactively wanting more franchisee partners or franchisee partners probably shutting down because there’s a cocoa store which is much larger that they can’t compete with what is happening there. So Sachin, I think as our position hasn’t changed as what we talked about in our last couple of quarterly calls, we are very sensitive about, we want to continue grow our franchisee partnership.
We have had strong partnership for almost 13 years. Plus with many of our franchisee partners as old as 10 years plus in the system, some of them even have multiple stores. So that remains very, very strong. And they have seen our journey for a long period of time and they continue to remain with us as long term partners. So nothing has changed. Many of our franchisee partners are also partners for other retail brands in the country and they have seen some bit of a sort of a material, sort of a slowdown. So that how somehow you know, they also become very cautious and we have also become super cautious because we just don’t want any larger store churn, although some of these are very controlled.
So the criteria for us to select a partner has become taller and taller over time in terms of controlling the churn and in terms of superior customer sort of experience that we can give to the end customer. Those are the reasons why there has been gross additions while there has been a churn which is in late single digit and therefore the net number remains what you are referring to. So I think over time we have been adding but because of the addition is lesser because of the quality of the partners and obviously cocoa, we have a far greater control and it’s relatively easier to have a say in that.
In terms of when the location is available we can actually close and move on. But no change. Fundamentally we continue to adopt more and more partners as we grow our business in offline, both for the franchisee partners as well as the coco. Yeah, in last couple of quarters you may have seen that. But fundamentally there is no change. Makes sense. Subam, thanks so much and all the best for FY26. Thank you Sachin.
operator
Thank you Sachin. Next question is from Percy. Percy, please unmute yourself.
Sachin Dixit
Yeah, hi, am I audible? Yes, yes. Yeah. So I just wanted to understand on your margins front, like for the India business, what do you think is the stable state margin of this business? Once we get enough scale, we are at around 9.5%. So where do you think we max out? Is it 12, 13, 15? What do you think is that number and what will drive it? Because if we are already at 55% private label, how much more can we push that? Because beyond the point, we are a retailer and we want to give the customer as much choice as possible. So if the entire platform becomes predominantly just a private label, then the customer experience will also be affected.
So assuming that this 55 goes to a max of 65 and that gives you some margin, but what else will result in the margin expansion? Because see now our scale is not small. We are close to 5,500 crore. Kind of a top line company for India itself. So yeah, that was my first question.
Abhinav Sharma
Really. Sure. First of all I would like to draw your attention to the fact that while we are at a 55%. We. Believe that we have and if you look at that slide that Vivek took you through, we have compounded on an average 50% higher than our overall India multi channel growth for our home brands. And that is the reason why we increased from 37% to 55% plus in last four to five years. Having said this, the journey hasn’t stopped, the growth hasn’t stopped of over compounding in our home brands. So we believe that we will continue and the reason is very, very fundamental. There are no, I mean there are no big brands in let’s say the largest category of babies and kids is apparels and fashion.
You tell me a brand which is in mothers, baby and kids in fashion which will be let’s say 400 crores plus. You won’t be able to find a large brand out there or multiple of them. Most of these brands either have withered away or have become very small. There are many of them which are 100 to 300 crores or 100 to 200 crores range and then there is a range of hundreds and thousands of them which are mompreneurs and brands which are beautifully crafted by mompreneurs or you know, they serve a very specific design, aspiration or quality, aspiration or curation.
And we will continue to hold them beautifully in our portfolio to be able to solve for mothers who are trying to solve for a specific curation need. So we believe that this partnership of holding them while we will continue to grow as a platform will remain relevant to some of most of our brand partners, 8,000 of them. But at the same time be able to continue to compound because at scale we can only do it building reliable supply chain, building reliable product, quality product at scale and at a price point that in a different set of price points that we will be able to bring.
So with that architecture we playing at a different price point, quality and supply chain and at a scale it’s very hard for a small brand or suboptimal size brand that’s not their aspiration. So therefore the blend of these mompreneurs, of these brands along with us will continue and we will continue to compound much superior as we have done in the past. We will continue to perform that. So we believe without putting a number, whether it’s 65 or more, we will continue to expand our share of home brand. And we believe that we aspire as we have shared in our earlier calls as well.
We aspire to be in India multi channel to be at least late teens as an adjusted ebitda. That is what we aspire to do. And we believe it is possible to deliver what the companies that we personally aspire and our management team aspire to be. Page industries where we can get there now, whether we take four years, six years, seven years, is that something that we can deliberate how opportunity presents to us. But we will not leave any stone unturned in terms of grabbing improvement of margin, both at a gross margin level as well as at a marketing efficiency level.
We again at a marketing efficiency is very unique to us. As you can see the multichannel model that we have. It’s very unique and then also obviously our operating sort of leverage that we can get on our fixed cost because we’ll not be expanding on our warehousing and so on and so forth. So all of these will compound as we will see which we will deliver over at least for now. We have been with you guys publicly at least for a couple of quarters, but you will continue to see us expanding gross margin as well as EBITDA for a very, very for a significant longer period of time.
Till the time we believe that we have achieved your aspirational goal.
Sachin Dixit
Sure. My second question is on the right to win for verticals versus horizontals. So supposing, if I just take the example of Nika, the two differentiations that I can see for NICA versus horizontal is that there is a big threat of fakes and counterfeits on horizontal platforms because Nika holds inventory and is not a marketplace and vouches for the products. That is one of the reasons why people buy on that. And the second reason is that this is a category which has huge number of SKUs. There is a huge long tail. Many of them are not available on horizontals and that is why people go there.
So if I have to find reasons why people need to go to first cry versus other horizontals, what would be the reasons in your case?
Abhinav Sharma
So I think we are very different than some of our other, you know, some of the names that you just mentioned. But from a first of all, our biggest differentiation is that as we see 55% of our GMV comes from our own home brand itself. They are not available on any other, I would say marketplace fundamentally. And so the end consumer, which is primarily the mother and young fathers they are coming to first cry for Two fundamental reasons. One, we are an MBO which is solving for every curated need for a brand, for a product type, product size in a much more curated way.
That is what we are solving for. We are a very, very highly curated platform. And Vivek took you through some of the personalization at an age level, at a category level, at a climatic condition level. Some of those areas when you club it with the age, it actually makes a world of a difference. And we are more of a discovery platform than a search led platform. So if you apply all of that with our share of a home brand and the curation of other mompreneurs, with fashion being the largest sort of segment for us, it presents a very different outcome from a young mother or a father to be with us compared to a horizontal.
And that is what. And you know already, as a matter of fact, that Baby Hub, just one of our home brand is India’s largest mother’s baby and kids product brand in the country. On GMB itself not available. I mean and what are the other moms buying on other, let’s say horizontals? The baby hug is not available fundamentally. So there are two reasons why they will come to us. Is simply it’s MBO on multi channel. Sorry, on online. Just. I’m talking about online because horizontals are only online. So as a curation for solving every need. And then second is repeat cohort of our buying of our home brand itself because they are very highly, I would say the products are superior in terms of quality experience.
They have done it over years and they just want to for lack of brands, known brands that they want to repeat and they are satisfied. So with these two reasons they will continue to come back to us. And that is exactly what we have seen even in 6 to 12 when our journeys are ending for mothers from 0 to 6, because Babyhug is available now it’s Pine kids which is taking the journey and legacy of Baby Hug to pine kids for the older age kid. So the power of a product, superior product itself, apart from convenience of online and curation that we have built through personalization, is driving more and more consumers and stickiness of those consumers, as you have seen in the cohort which Vivek also took you through, is a result of all of these work that we have been able to deliver.
Sachin Dixit
May I be permitted?
Abhinav Sharma
Sorry, yeah, please. One statement to this. So all the horizontals actually are reflection of the market which is highly unorganized. So that is where both in terms of home brands and the other brands as well. Third Party brands as well. Our curation ensures a superior selection as well as experience for the consumer. And that is what was mentioning increases our stickiness and strength for the organization.
Sachin Dixit
Got it. Got it. If I might be permitted one small question more on the India business growth this year has been around 15% which is a little lower than our expectation of around 17 to 18%. So do you think this is a blip or an anomaly and you will come back to a 17, 18% kind of number or do you think that what we have displayed this year is more likely to be the sustainable growth going ahead.
Abhinav Sharma
So Parsi, while in the short run it’s very difficult to sort of outline exactly, you know, data point but I can, you know what we collectively think is that you know the industry which is growing at 12 to 14%, highly unorganized and you know this particular I would say year saw a slight bit of a, or rather this calendar year starting from January, February, we saw a little bit of a consumer slowdown and especially in the offline. So we believe that it is not a reflection of a medium term approach of the overall growth that the industry will demonstrate.
And being the largest player in the industry we should be able to come back to a much superior growth. If you look at our online even Q4 resulted in 16% GMV growth quarter on quarter, quarter four over quarter four, I mean 25 over 24. It’s just the offline piece we believe it will get. I think it’s just a blip. Even the government is doing its bit in terms of reducing some tax slabs and some of the other areas where government help will also reflect in some more consumer pickup plus some of our other efforts internally that we are putting up maybe we can talk about but those are also going to fill up getting more and more customers and improving retention or improving frequency.
So we believe it is just, I think a temporary blip is what we believe because we remain steady and strong as far as a shift in terms of driving more growth over a medium to long run. An important thing per se is that we are not losing our growth to any competitors, you know, or any new players better than the industry growth while we have seen some slowdown but we continue to deliver a better growth compared to the industry growth per se.
Sachin Dixit
Thanks Gautam Supam, Vivek, thank you very much. That’s all from my side.
Abhinav Sharma
Thanks Basi.
operator
Thank you Parsi. Next question is from Sachin Salgaonkar. Sachin, please unmute yourself.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Thanks Anish. Hi management. Thanks so much for the improved disclosure Two questions from me. First question is on international business. Clearly the business is in nascent stages but we are seeing an order growth of 8% on a YoY basis and you guys clarified it’s largely on the back of competition. So the question here is is it only competition or is it something else which is impacting the growth? And the reason is see the players which we are talking about like Temu and others are here to stay in the market perhaps for a long time. And what we are seeing in other markets is, you know they tend to get aggressive over a period of time.
So I was wondering if there is any change in strategy from management to accelerate the growth out here given the fact that the growth is slowing for last couple of quarters.
Abhinav Sharma
Sure Sachin, I’ll just maybe start the answer and maybe Abhinav can add to it or Gautam can add. So look, I think it was important for us while this is some external factor that really played out as I earlier also alluded, we have seen this in the past in India as well when some of the marketplaces are very very aggressive but they became thinner over time. That same thing will play out in Middle east geography as well. It is important that we keep our head down and build the moat that we started our journey with because that is what will help us.
Not just discounts or higher marketing burn on higher CPMs. So that doesn’t result except for increasing your burn. It was easy for us, we had the money, we can do all of that but we don’t believe in that. It is better to improve the quality of the customers, improve penetration of the home brands, improve assortment of the home brands that we have in India taking there. We have actually in fact tailored home brands for the Middle east market as well. So we just want to focus on those building those assortments because it takes time to build those assortment and get the penetration of those assortments into the market.
Get our product mix the category, mix our home brand mix to a level that what India has already accomplished in an accelerated way because once you deliver that none of the horizontals will ever be able to sort of they don’t operate in that fashion. So therefore we will be having a very superior economics over a period of time. So we don’t want to play a rushed game, we want to play a very steady game to ensure that we build a sustainable, profitable growth keeping a focus on reducing burn and making our Middle east operations profitable as per our internal plan of within a few years.
We want to make it profitable, neutral ebitda. That is what we want to focus more on through our own strengths rather than actually burning more sort of tire. I think that’s how we are tracking ourselves internally, not a rest approach. But Amina, if you want to add anything or Gautam, if you want to add anything here.
Vivek Goyal
So in fact, as Supam mentioned earlier, Sachin, we have witnessed the competition from horizontals in India as well during 2013-2016. We stick to our playbook on building home brands, improving margins and today we can proudly say that we are the largest multi channel there in India in terms of gmv. The largest brand again is Baby Hug and we have taken the same playbook in Middle east as well. So we will be focused more on improving the customer stickiness as we have done in India. And you can see the impact of the same or the strength of the playbook in the margins.
What we have delivered in India in seven years in terms of gross margin, we have delivered that in Middle east in four years. Amina, if you want to add anything. I think as you guys have covered it completely.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Great, thank you. My second question is on Global Bees. Clearly a very phenomenal growth in a quarter given the context that there’s a consumption slowdown going into India and what we are seeing on the ground with multiple D2C brands, given the fact that consumer preferences are changing so fast now with how quick commerce is evolving, not many brands are sort of scaling up beyond a particular level. So the question to you guys is out there is should this be a steady state growth going ahead in terms of let’s say 25 to 30% or how could one think about sort of a normalized growth in this business and same is in terms of long term steady state margins for Global Bees.
How to think about that.
Abhinav Sharma
Going forward? I think obviously growth has to moderate. You know, it won’t remain at a 30% level but yeah, it will remain, you know, meaningfully high as we go along for at least next few years to come. We are a young company. We have, you know, some great, I would say brands and great sort of founders that are working with us, you know, hungry and all of us are working together to grow some of these brands and as I said their journey itself, they’re fairly young so they will have a very decent growth and a good even profitability margin as well.
The slide that we Talked about, the 8% of our business which was 14% earlier leads to a 30% negative EBITDA. Once you shrink that meaningfully low in terms of 8% becoming even smaller and 30% reducing to zero. You can imagine our business will be even more profitable at a current stage itself. I mean even if you don’t increase the gross margin or the operating leverage within the rest of the brands, which is 92% of the business. Right. So essentially we are clearly saying that global based business over a period of time will improve adjusted ebitda.
No questions on that. Yeah, it will play out in a, I would say three to five year journey. It’s a hardly a less than four year old company. First year went out and you know, a lot of acquisitions as you know, it’s not easy, I mean but I just want to make sure that while the business has done segment has done very well and so on so forth and, and we continue to believe that we will deliver stronger performance both in top line and bottom line for a few, I mean many years to come because we believe the story is getting there.
We have the playbook that we have executed well and it’s getting stronger and stronger.
Vivek Goyal
And just to add Sachin, so while the Consol growth of global bees is 30% but if you see the growth in the core brands, the four core segments, the growth is disproportionately higher.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Got it. Okay, thank you guys.
operator
Thank you Sachin. Next question is from Garima. Garima, please unmute yourself.
Garima
Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity. I also had a couple of questions on Global Peace. What was the loss Global bees made in FY25? And this CCPS infusion is essentially to. Keep funding losses for the next two, three years or you have some acquisitions in mind. How should we read it?
Abhinav Sharma
So at the EBITDA level, Garima, you know Global Bees is positive. It has given us a positive EBITDA of 22 crore rupees. The other thing which we, you know, post ebitda, the large part of the spend is a non cash, you know, expenditure which is in the form of amortization of brands which is roughly 100 crore rupees every year and some finance costs towards the borrowings made by Global Beast and their subsidiary. Other than this, if we adjust these two items we will reach to, you know, at a PVT level in Global Bees. One important thing I would like to mention is if you see, you know, the Consol results, there is an exceptional item that we have taken roughly amounting to 37 crore rupees.
Those are towards impairment of some brands in Global Bees. So you will see that additional one time impact in Global Bees as an. Exceptional item. Other than that it’s doing very well. Brand amortization again is the classification of investment done by Global Bees in the console financial statement. So we have to amortize it over, over, over period. So that’s a non cash expenses and once you know the company starts generating higher cash profits, you know I think the numbers should become better. So the CCPS is towards what this. Is largely for taking care of their working capital requirements are in.
Garima
All right, understood. Global Bees also recently had departure of the CEO plus some board of directors designing. What was that about and who takes over the reins of this entity going forward.
Abhinav Sharma
So Garima, I think some of these, you know news article I would like to clarify. First of all obviously Nitin who was the CEO of the company, you know left for the personal reasons. His role has been taken over by Anuj, Anuj Jain who has almost you know, 10 plus years of experience with ITC and L’ Oreal. He was you know a thorough professional. He’s a you know MBA and I mean some of these are public information but sharing it that he was with ITC and L’ Oreal before he joined First Cry.
He’s been with First Cry for 12 years. So he has seen a 20 year plus consumer product journey, a playbook across ITC, L’ Oreal and First Cry and steered up the ship in India in multi channel and in baby hug as well as. So he has seen D2C he has seen online, he’s seen offline, he’s seen throughout our journey of Cry. And also lastly he was handling us cool business and we felt he was he would be most appropriate and he has now taken the reins of the global beast. So that’s Anuj and about the directors, so I would just like to clarify.
Look, I mean the news article said that three directors resigned after Nitin resigned. That’s not correct. One director resigned nine months prior to Nitin. And see these are investor directors, Garima and typically investor directors, typically investor, I mean PE VC fund investor directors and they typically have an internal policy. While I can’t speak for any one of them on their behalf. But what I’m saying at a generic level they have a typical policy of not being part of a board of a publicly listed or redeemed public listed company. Therefore the request was to not being part of as a board member.
So that is. And while one of them designed nine months prior to Nitin which was like early September or August somewhere around that. But the news article, we know how it was but so Please ignore that. And one of the investor directors remain as an observer as well. So it’s not that it completely moved away. So that’s all.
Vivek Goyal
I just to give you additional comfort, Garima, few of these investors who used to represent on the board of Global Bees, they have participated along with us in the recent funding we have done for Global. Not few, all of them, all three of them. All of them have invested in the last round. So there is not even a single exception.
operator
Thank you very much. The next question is from Madhav Yadav. Please introduce yourself and unmute.
Madhav Yadav
Hello? Yeah, am I audible?
Gautam Sharma Brooke
Yes, Mahavir, we can hear you.
Madhav Yadav
Yeah. Hi Supram. Hi Gautam. This is Tejas from Avendus. So with Master delivery becoming a baseline expectation across the ecosystem, including for the traditional online players, what steps are we taking to strengthen our delivery proposition?
Abhinav Sharma
I had, I heard the second part of your question, but first, delivery becoming a base. I didn’t understand you meaning delivery experience.
Madhav Yadav
Yes, I’ll repeat it. So am I audible?
Abhinav Sharma
You’re absolutely audible.
Madhav Yadav
Yeah. So no, I was just saying that now faster delivery has become a bit Hygiene baseline expectation.
Supam Maheshwari
Understood. Okay, so look, you’re absolutely right. So what we are doing, Tejas there, we haven’t put a slide on it, but you know what we are doing. I’ll also sort of share that. I think some of companies like us and online companies or e commerce companies as well have experienced a little bit of a, I would say, you know, customer experience being, I would say not up to the mark that we would have wished as operators because some of our delivery partners have had challenges. And while, and those are, those are because of the manpower constraints on the last mile end which we are dependent on them.
So those, I’m talking about India Multichannel, India Online in that sense. So those are experiences that we have faced in the last, I would say two, three months, a lot more than what we have faced in the past. And I think some of other colleagues from the overall ecosystem has alluded to some of these commentary as well. Having said this, what we are doing to your answer to your question as well, while you know, we are improving in some of the cities, we have done some experiments to take our tech infra and work with local, you know, logistics partners within those cities to be able to improve, you know, the last mile experience as well as improved and a faster delivery.
So let’s say in a, in a city we were delivering SDD same day delivery in six hours. So our attempt is now to reduce it to four hours or a three hour. So that is experiment that we have taken into few cities as of today in last couple of months. And our endeavor will be to continue to expand on the journey that we are just talking about into many more cities so that we do not remain dependent or we do not really have to work at an industry average level which has deteriorated in past couple of months.
And still we will be able to improve the quality of the customer experience in terms of delivery performance. So we will expand on our experiment that we have just in a couple of cities to be able to overall improve and at the same cost, not just increasing the cost. So I hope I have been able to answer your question in terms of directionally that what we are doing to improve the delivery experience faster delivery experience for our customers.
Madhav Yadav
Yeah, Subham, very clear, thanks. Second question pertains to private label ambition that you spoke about. Now what we have observed that it’s a double edged sword from multiple dimension, from working capital, from customer expectations whether they are ready for it or not. So when you look at our categories today, where are we under indexed? You think materially in private label versus let’s say company average. And I’m assuming that our private label contribution will be higher on offline channel versus online channel. So how should one think about from near term, very immediate, one or two year perspective how this can move in terms of low lever of private label?
Supam Maheshwari
Only two points that I will make. First of all I would request everyone to call it home brands. We just feel private is just about margin and not about the love and how we have built all of these products. So we certainly call it home brands. But in the home brand point I would say that it’s not like a double edged sword because our long standing partners, brand partners will continue to grow with us. It’s not that they are not growing with us. It’s not that there will not be more partners that we will take in our partnership.
As if you see our disclosures on number of partnerships from 7,000 brands, now we are at 8,000 brands. So a number of brand partnerships have continued to increase. But having said this, many of our brand partners are small and they for whatever historical or evolution curve reasons they will remain while we will continue to over compound on our growth journey in terms of home brand because it is a very structured playbook, structured homework that we do from a design till manufacturing and capability and all of that. So therefore we will remain, I would say powerful enough while we continue to embrace our other partners as well and the ecosystem will continue to deliver a superior home brand share while at the same time embracing both brand partners and expectation of our end consumers and mothers who want to solve for unique attributed products as well while home brand solves for some of them.
So I don’t think that would be a challenge and that hasn’t been a challenge even in the past when we traversed our journey from 37% to 55% plus. So we don’t believe that it will be the case unless you were not being able to have brands which are not growing with us. And in terms of gross margin expansion home brands definitely give more home margins and therefore that will continue to happen for us in terms of margin expansion. So it will not be the case and we will see our journey together for over next few quarters and years.
We won’t be able to talk about a short term but I think over a longer period of time there are no big brands that really kind of say after baby hour after some of these brands no brand is like in a very even in a if I just remove India’s let’s say Pampers and Johnsons and some of these brands in fashion not even a mid single digit percentage in terms of the share. So it’s very comforting for us to embrace all of that and the best attributes that they make will embrace with us while we continue to compound on our own brand strategy.
Madhav Yadav
Subam, if I may add one point on this because you mentioned that we should not call private label but we should call our brands home brands. So one of the core fundamental in developing products in home brands is not to capture share in any under penetrated category. The fundamental premise why we create any product is to give a superior experience to the end consumer and that is a very important factor for the over period of time how we have grown our brands and we continue to follow that philosophy as a company.
Supam Maheshwari
Thanks.
Madhav Yadav
Thanks Vivek Thanks Vipoom. Very clear. Thanks and all the best for coming quarters.
Abhinav Sharma
Thanks Sages.
operator
Thank you Sages. Next question is from Nigel. Nigel please unmute yourself.
Nigel
Good evening sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Firstly can you talk about the unit economics for various types of offline stores in terms of store sizes, capex revenue and profitability for the first cry stores versus baby hug stores and how does it work for owned versus franchisee stores as well?
Abhinav Sharma
Okay, I think it’s there in some of our previous sort of quarterly calls but Gautam we want to repeat at a high level maybe so that is so. The size of the store. If I talk about the First Cry franchisee stores are typically 1,500 to 1600 square foot area the same size we follow for our baby accompanying stores. However when it comes to first cry company owned stores those are a little larger probably a 2,000 to 2,500 square feet. In terms of capex that we do, the capex per square foot is is around 1500 rupees per square foot and a little lesser than the capex is the working capital that we put in, you know in each company own stores. So roughly 1100 rupees per square foot is the working capital we put in.
In terms of profitability, you know. At. CM2 level if we talked about both offline stores as well as online and gives us almost a similar profitability post marketing spending. And even in CM2 for stores will be post rent and some of these franchisee partners Nigel, we have had, you know a large number of our franchisee partners have been seven, eight years plus, many of them are 10 years plus and they have multiple shops with us so they have seen the profitability in their stores over years with us and they have continued to stay and have been a long standing partner with us. So and likewise we have tried to look for such partners who can be a long term partners on that basis only. We started our cocoa journey roughly around 2021 because of having done the business for last first 10 years.
So that’s how the profitability was ensured in the fourfo network both for the franchisee and for the company and therefore we took that journey ahead for the Coco journey as well.
Nigel
Yeah, thanks for the detailed reply. Second question is for the India business, what sort of growth have you had in the India online business versus the offline business?
Abhinav Sharma
Yeah, it’s there in the disclosures. Further in the presentation. For the online business Nigel, we had 18% GMV growth for FY25 over FY24. Even for Q4 of FY25 we had 16% growth over FY24 Q4 for the online but for the offline business annual one I wouldn’t exactly remember, I think it is around 11 or 12%. Slightly lower, slightly lower but for Q4. It is around 5% and that is largely because of, you know we mentioned that, you know there is slowdown we have witnessed especially in the offline business. Plus some store closures that we have in the base effect of the last previous quarter.
operator
Thank you Nigel. In the interest of time we’ll take one last question from Chintan. Chintan, please unmute yourself.
Chintan
Hi. Hi. So I just had one question and that is on India offline business. So we understood the external issues that we faced as well as some store closures that impacted the performance. But it was slightly medium to long term as a strategy, what are we doing or what steps we are taking so as to, you know, have more conversions from unorganized to organize as well as protect ourselves from the competitive intensity that keeps on increasing. That is one. And second, how do you think in medium to long term? You know, this online is say 78% of DMB and it’s doing pretty well.
So over longer term, how do you think offline as a strategy? Where does this mix head to and what were the plans for expansion in this segment? That’s it. From my side, sure.
Abhinav Sharma
Chintan. So Chintan first, fundamentally, if you look at our business, mothers love to buy the product both online and offline. If you remember one of the slides that Vivek showed, this is the first time that we had done this disclosure in the top 20 cities. 38% of our GMV comes from customers which have an overlap of online and offline. And we have been seeing this very unique category where consumers or mothers typically love to buy products both online as well as offline. They can start their journey online and go offline as well in the vicinity of their homes and the reverse way as well, which is going offline and come for convenience in the online because they build a trust with the platform as well as with the product and the brand or that curation that we have.
So I think fundamentally nothing will change this. If you look at last three years of our journey, our ratio between online offline has not materially changed maybe 100 to 200bps here and there in terms of the share. So not material changes has happened and we will continue to expand our offline operation as well in terms of the gross block that we will add in FY26 will be somewhere similar to FY25. So we do not feel that we will have a lot of legroom to play even to expand our offline network. But we have become more cautious for last few months that we have seen and we believe these are temporary because ultimately the customer that we get.
How we look at our offline business particularly is the footfall that gets the customer into our store, gets the experience of our platform also then goes online. So it has a material network effect and advantage both in terms of the experience and the CAC eventually even for online and so on and so forth. It’s a very unique proposition of multi channel which you would not find in a very traditional or a normal business model, in a retail model. So we believe that we will continue to play from a consumer insight or a mother’s insight of buying both and also the unit economic benefit that we will continue to derive from being both present online and offline.
So we will continue to play this card for a very long period of time. We may tailor here and there in terms of improving the wallet share of the customer in that catchment and the footfall optimization that we can continue to do. So those are efficiencies that we will try to drive to build more capital efficiency. But strategy wise, nothing will change. We’ll continue to compound on both our offline which will also deliver online and online will deliver offline as well.
operator
Thank you all the participants. That was the last question. Back to Supam and Gautam and everyone to just for the concluding remarks.
Abhinav Sharma
Thank you very much everyone for being patient. Instead of reserving one hour, we reserved one and a half hours so that you can have a lot more detailed conversation. But really appreciate your time and patience. Look forward to seeing you in the next quarter. Thank you.
Vivek Goyal
Thank you so much everyone. Thank you so much.
Abhinav Sharma
Thank you so much.
Vivek Goyal
Goodbye.