CarTrade Tech Limited (NSE: CARTRADE) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 07, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Vinay Sanghi — Chairman and Managing Director
Aneesha Bhandary — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Vimal Gohil — Analyst
Vijit Jain — Analyst
Siddarth — Analyst
Dhruv Bhatia — Analyst
Sachin Dixit — Analyst
Nishit Jalan — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Palak — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 and FY ’25 Earnings Conference Call of CarTrade Tech Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on-date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performances and involves risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.I now hand the conference over to Mr Vinay Sangi, Chairman and Managing Director of Tech Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Vinay Sanghi — Chairman and Managing Director
Thank you. And welcome to all — welcome to all of you in this FY ’25 earnings call. Thank you for taking the time-out this afternoon.
I want to first start with the presentation, which is on Slide 3 to start with. I want to communicate to all of you that Tech has delivered its best-ever revenue and profits in a year. It has delivered a revenue growth of 28% for the year at INR711 crores and of course, a 627% increase in profit-after-tax at INR145 crores. I also want to highlight that three of our platforms, Carvale, and OLEX on a year-on unique consumer basis get more than 150 million customers, which is a unique achievement to any company in India, but also not only in India, but also all over the world, very few companies three different platforms getting more than 150 million unique customers per year-on, as I said, on three different platforms.
What is driving this growth? All our businesses have grown well this year and margins have increased as well. The Consumer group during the — during the year quarter-on-quarter grew at 30%, resulting in 100% profit growth. We also achieved a 29% EBITDA margin, which is a benchmark of excellence. The remarketing business or Sriram Automall grew at 12% with a 47% increase in profitability, which shows again that it’s on its recovery path to growth. And OLX have consistently grown quarter-after-quarter with a strong 72% growth in profits in-quarter four last year to this year.
If I look at the next slide, which is Slide 4, just want to reiterate again that we achieved the highest-ever profit for the quarter as well at INR46.1 crores. We’re number-one automotive platform in India, number-one used classified platform, number-one vehicle auction platform. Across all our platform, we receive more than 70 — approximately 74 million customers every month, 95% of them come organically, which shows or drives the margins of the company and shows the brand affinity of all the three brands, Carvale, OLX and. We have 500 plus physical locations including automall and stores as well as OLX stores. More than 1.4 million vehicles got auctioned last year.
Revenue for Q4 was at INR189.5 crores, which is the highest-ever in any Q4. And our adjusted EBITDA, which is almost like a cash proxy for the company is at INR71 crores. Profit-after-tax, as I said, is INR46 crores the highest of our profit in any quarter. And as you see, our cash balances have gone up to INR954 crore. I just want to highlight here, a year-ago, the cash balance was close to INR750 crores, which shows that INR200 crores of cash profits got added by the company during the year. And also I want to highlight that in Q4 itself, the approximately cash profit of approximate INR70 crores got added. If you see the Q3 results, you will see the cash balance was close to INR880 crores, which is now INR954 crores. So it shows the profitability, the unit economics of the company across all its businesses.
So if I look at the next slide, which is the consolidated results of the company, as I said, the profits of the company grew more than six times to INR145 crores during the year. Overall, during the year, revenue grew 28%, EBITDA grew 19%, margins went from 16% last year to 23% this year and 27% in Q4, which shows the continuous increasing of margins. When you look at profitability itself from last year INR24.96 crores in the quarter, this year is INR46.1 crores in-quarter four and on an annual basis, we reached INR145 crores. So all-in all, strong results across revenue growth, profitability growth and unit economic growth throughout the year in not only in a consolidated basis, but also on — individually in each of the businesses.
If you look at Slide 6, which is the Consumer group of Carvala and, quarter has grown 30%, which has led to 123% growth in EBITDA. Again, here I want to reiterate — reiterate that shows the operating leverage in the business with very little cost increase. You see the cost increase is only about 11% up in total costs, but the profitability has gone up by 123% on a 30% increase in revenue. So overall, even during the year, on a standalone basis, our expenses grew only 4% against a 27% increase in revenue, which led to this 279% EBITDA growth during the year. As I said earlier, PAT has grown at 100% for the quarter in the standalone consumer group business.
If you look at the remarketing business, the total income is up by 12% in the quarter and the year. Profitability is up by approximately 19% during the quarter and profit-after-tax up by 47% during the quarter. I think the business has been generally on its back to growth or on a growth track after a few quarters of a flattish performance and we feel very enthusiastic about the prospects of the business in the coming years ahead. So if we look at OLX, India in the quarter grown by 12%, profits up 88% again shows the operating leverage in the business and profit-after-tax gone up by 72%, which is up by INR15 crores for the quarter. It’s also achieved its highest quarter ever during the last quarter. I must iterate here that the growth of 12% is something we feel confident you know, which is going to change in the coming quarters and years. A lot of the product initiatives and work we’ve done are still to play-out. And we’re very, very optimistic about the future prospects of OLX if you look at the overall traffic, I just want to highlight, the traffic of the consumer group is actually up year-on-year by about 10%. Normally, Q3 is a better quarter in terms of consumer traffic just because the festival season. And therefore, you see a slight decline from Q3 to Q4. But if you look at Q4 this year versus last year, there is a growth in traffic. So we feel again pretty enthusiastic about or pretty positive about the consumer traction on the consumer group platforms or on OLX.
All-in all, I would — I would again reiterate — reiterate that we think with the current year has been a quite a landmark year for the company. Our margins have grown, revenues have grown, profitability has grown, our M&A has stabilized and on the path to doing big things in the future. Shriram has bounced back. So feel generally very enthusiastic about the results of the company and the prospects of the company in the coming years. So this is why I wanted to stress on. We — as I said, this has probably been a pretty landmark year for the company and feel very, very excited about the future prospects of the company. I also want to add here that we are making a lot of investments in-product and technology across the group on things like obviously AI and various other tools for enabling new products to our customers and that’s in OLX and across our businesses. And a lot of the investments we feel in new tech and new product will also help us in the coming years ahead. So of course, all the product and tech investment we are doing is part of our operating cost. But yeah, there’s a lot of investment going into innovation for all our consumers across all our platforms. This is what I want to start-off with.
I’m happy to now take-up questions from all of you and-answer any clarification or doubts you might have. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Tar in one on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Tar in two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Vimal Jamnadas Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management Private Limited. Please go-ahead, sir.
Vimal Gohil
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Vinay Sanghi
Thank you.
Vimal Gohil
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. My first question is on OLX. You acknowledged the — you had — you’ve taken some initiatives to bring growth back on-track. If you could highlight what exactly are these initiatives, if you could detail some of them, that will be great. And also despite lower-growth, we’ve seen OLX’s margins despite lower-growth expand not only on a sequential basis, but on a Y-o-Y basis as well. So what is causing that? I do see the — there is a reduction in the employee cost and other expenses. Is there some more room to — for these reductions or is there some restructuring that is still pending since the acquisition happened.
Vinay Sanghi
Thanks, Vimal, and thanks for the question. I think the first part is, when we took over, it’s been about a year and a half since we took over OLEX, India. And as I said, as I said in the earlier calls, a lot of the first-six months-to eight months was about technology transition, transitioning the platform to our environment. And then in the next four to six months, we spent tremendous effort in stabilizing the platform and user growth as well as working on the current product intake and making improvements there on the current technology and product which is there for consumers. I think in the last four, five months, after having built-out the entire technology and product team and stability in the team, we have now started developing additional features products for all our customers on the OLX platform. As you know, OLX has more than 30 million customers a month and close to 180 million to 190 million customers a year. It’s a very, very strong digital brand. And our attempt here is now someone selling — looking to sell a used product or buy a used product, which is, as I said, in India, it’s the only destination or the number-one destination by far to sell a used product or buy a used product. So the features and products we’re looking to add are enabling consumers like you and me who sell a buy a use product and the multiple, multiple product features which are starting to get created or built for these transactions. We feel pretty confident that in the next — I mean, not only quarters, but years, a lot of this value-add will get added to the platform, which should help consumer — consumer experience, but also help monetization in the company, all of that. So that’s the first part of your question.
I think the second part is margins have gone up. There is some cost optimization done by us. Generally, we don’t think that there’s much cost optimization opportunity in the business. The big opportunity here is to grow consumer experience and obviously then monetization, etc., et-cetera.
Vimal Gohil
Yeah. Vinay, in terms of monetization, that is exactly what I wanted to understand. If you can give us a couple of examples or a couple of instances where you have been able to monetize a few features or you’ve been able to add a few revenue streams to LX, if you could just highlight those, that will help. Thanks.
Vinay Sanghi
No, till now, I’ll be honest, till now actually the sequential revenue increase continuously over the last few quarters, right, as we’ve shown earlier. So even the reality is that a lot of what we are doing now is a lot of what we are monetizing right now is not products we are rolling or going to roll-out. They are mostly products which existed before, where it’s a little more of efficiency and optimization, etc., etc. So we yet haven’t seen a lot of the outcomes of many of the initiatives we’ve been taking on the product technology side and that should come as I said, in the coming quarters and coming years. That’s why we feel so enthusiastic about the business that the business stability and growth in revenue and margin growth has happened before even we have gone ahead and created many more products for improving user experience on the platform further.
Vimal Gohil
Yeah. Understood. Sir, the next question is just a small data point. For F ’25, if you could just give us a sense as for the consumer business, what would be the broad breakup of — between the actual car sales from leads and the sales from used-car and the subscription model that we gave to you know the dealers.
Vinay Sanghi
Well, what — Anisha, do you want to take this? I think what we normally give is OEM sales and dealer sales, right, Aisha, am I correct? And Anisha, you want to these numbers?
Aneesha Bhandary
Yes, this is similar to our past 65% 35%.
Vinay Sanghi
65% is OEMs and 35% is dealers. Correct.
Aneesha Bhandary
In the similar range to what we’ve been disclosing in four it’s similar range.
Vinay Sanghi
That’s right.
Vimal Gohil
So that continues for FY ’25 is that correct.
Vinay Sanghi
Not much change.
Aneesha Bhandary
There’s not much change.
Vimal Gohil
Fair enough. Thank you so much. I’ll come back-in the queue.
Vinay Sanghi
Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citigroup.
Vijit Jain
Yeah, hi. Thanks. Thanks. Hi, Vinay. Congratulations again another quarter of 30% growth in the consumer business. So my question is now you have two quarters here in the consumer business where the growth has clearly stepped-up. My first question is, you know, is your Q-o-Q seasonality here more aligned with auto OEMs, would you say? And related to that, you said last-time around, I think demand-supply dynamics in the industry have shifted and you’re seeing benefit of that in your — in the dealers advertising on your platform on all of those. So do you see the same trend as you look-forward into F ’26, more inclination from both dealers as well as OEMs to advertise more aggressively on platforms like you. Is — and then finally, related to that, what kind of growth do you think you can get-in F ’26? So that’s my first question on the consumer business.
Vinay Sanghi
So let me just answer that. Yeah, first, I think normally we don’t see much seasonality Q3, Q4. This is a very odd year where actually the industry saw seasonality, not just us, right? I mean, very strong seasonality. October was a very big high for the automotive industry, if you see. And I think we benefited from that, and Q4 has actually grown substantially in the previous Q4 anyway, right? But we did benefit from a Q3 seasonality and that’s shown in the consumer traffic, right, even the consumer traffic, even though we’ve grown over previous year, the number of impressions on the Internet itself have automotive at least what we see seems to be less than in Q4 than Q3, which shows that there was a very-high seasonality this year more than normal, although in our financials, it’s very marginal, the seasonality. If you see we from a profitability standpoint, we almost had a higher seven numbers, right? I mean actually we had the highest several numbers. So it’s not — it’s not material or not significant to us as a company on a consolidated level, but we did — we have seen the automotive industry a strong this time a stronger than normal seasonality in Q3, Q4, right? Although Q4 has been pretty good as well in-spite of that. I mean, to be honest. That’s one.
The second thing is the OEM dealer part. I think our initial view maybe a year, two years ago was seeing other examples across the world was that the OEM business grows faster initially and then the dealer business takes over and the OEM business slows down and eventually the dealer business is higher than the OEM business. As it’s happened, even the growth rates are pretty similar, if you can see the ratios are not changing. So it seems like just maybe it’s towards India, where it’s early-stage — early days yet and the OEM is still heavily investing in digital, right? And therefore, the OEM and the dealer both are growing equally. It seems like that.
Vijit Jain
Right.
Vinay Sanghi
It’s probably the trend. I don’t see a reason why the trend won’t be the same next year in terms of the OEM dealer share? That’s the question.
Vijit Jain
Actually my question was more along the lines of — so this 30% growth on the consumer business that you’ve seen in the second-half of F ’25, do you think the drivers are the same? So F ’26 would look closer to that in terms of growth rate in consumer business?
Vinay Sanghi
I can’t give guidance, but — but I don’t think much has changed in the industry, to be honest. I mean, it seems that the industry is in the 0% to 5% growth for cars especially. I’m most analysts and economists are saying that the FY ’26 should be between 0% to 5% growth somewhere in the automotive industry. That’s — that’s the general view.
Vijit Jain
Got it.
Vinay Sanghi
I think it is that might be the view, so which is very similar to last year probably.
Vijit Jain
Got it. And I within this, broadly, I wanted to get your take on what does new launches from companies do here in terms of — so for example, in the bike segment, if you’re seeing a lot of new launches, for example, do you see more advertising — advertising activity directly on your platform almost immediately on both bikes as well as car business? And related to that, is bike segment doing better growth in the car segment for you?
Vinay Sanghi
Actually bikes and cars had reasonable similar growth this year. But to be — to be fair, the new launches do help pens. I mean, people do spend money, more money on OEMs do spend more money on launches. So — but also to be honest, the number of launches per year are not that different. I mean, you may have an odd COVID year, et-cetera. But generally, otherwise, the number of launches per year are pretty similar. It’s not something which is changing.
Vijit Jain
Right. How about the new energy vehicles? Because I think in some other countries, you’ve seen new OEMs coming up on new energy vehicles coming up.
Vinay Sanghi
They only demo bikes and they’re very small in terms of market-share, right? The number of vehicles being sold by them versus the entire two-wheel industry is very, very small. So it’s not material. But if I take-out a few more DVs and I take-out Bajaj and TVS, the rest of the lot are really all — numbers are not big compared to the two-wheeler industry in terms of size, very small rate and therefore the spends are very small as well. It’s relatively small, right? So, yeah, I don’t think it’s material yet, whether clean-energy kind of vehicles are getting launched, new vehicle launches in the whole, whether IC — whether IC or EV or etc., hybrids, whatever that might be, it helps anyway. I think that’s the point.
Vijit Jain
Got it. And my last question, so in the last month or so, we’ve seen a couple of you know of automotive platforms, websites getting acquired, Team BHP and Auto Cars specifically, I think. So your thoughts on those assets and did you — I don’t know if you can discuss it, but did you consider those acquisitions as well? I think that was my second question.
Vinay Sanghi
So they’re very different — I mean, I don’t want to get into whether we consider or not, but they’re very different platforms. I mean, the ones you mentioned are more content-driven information places or enthusiast destinations, not really a transaction platform like. I mean in the scale of and-or or versus them is not comparable actually at all. So as I said, and both have more 150 million customers a year, right? So unique. It’s just a different level of scale. So they are more enthusiast kind of platforms. I think Carvali is more or is more to buy a vehicle. Yeah.
Vijit Jain
Got it. Understood. And one last question on the Sriram Automall. Just am trying to understand the Q-o-Q you have.
Operator
Maybe–
Vijit Jain
Sure. I’ll just jump back to the queue. Sure, sure.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, please limit your question to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Siddarth from Nomura. Please go-ahead.
Siddarth
Thanks for the opportunity and again, congrats on a good set of numbers. First question I must sir. First question on this consumer business again. I mean, some color if you have in terms of the industry growth, how has it been say last year or maybe last quarter and where-is this incremental growth coming from? Because like we understand the industry structure may not change materially in terms of demand/supply like we are seeing right now. But in — under that construct, how should we look at the growth, should we expect the current momentum to sustain or some more normalization like we have seen in the last quarter? So some sense, if we get will be really helpful.
Vinay Sanghi
The industry growth, as you know, with public information, as I said, the industry is growing at a single low-single digit, right? And it generally the view is that the industry like to go at the same pace the next year. That’s the economists or the analyst view. I mean, that it will be in that same range. So we don’t see any basic market change or any kind of market dynamics change across the industry at all. I think that’s the first part. The second part is, we continue to play a role, which is helping consumers to buy cars or buy bikes or manufacture the dealers to sell them. And you know, we continue building products to enable it and more so now with a lot of new tools and analytics and AI tools available, etc., etc. So we’re getting closer and closer to solving consumers’ problems. So we definitely see our role being the same, if not increase, right, in the industry. So — and we still feel very optimistic about the market market sentiment and the fact that there’s growth in the industry itself. Yeah, I would generally be quite positive about the new vehicle market.
Siddarth
Okay. Understood, sir. And we have seen a bit of step-up in the marketing expense in the current quarter, obviously, also seeing some slowdown in that visitors run-rate. So do you think this is something seasonal again and will normalize going ahead or probably we will need to sort of push marketing a bit higher or try to drive growth in the coming year?
Vinay Sanghi
No, I don’t think. First of all, marketing is a very small part of our cost, right? It’s INR7 crores in the quarter, INR7.6 crores in the whole quarter on in the consumer group, which is, you know, about just about over 10% of our revenue, right? So it’s not significant. We don’t see much variation from here, right, overall in the marketing cost. As I said, the traffic year-on-year is up 10% overall. The reason one would think that it’s down sequentially by about 8%, 9% because this Q3 was a very strong quarter this year. I think that was the main reason. It has very disproportionate growth in that particular quarter. So there’s nothing here to be seen that the marketing costs aren’t not significant with the company on a whole and that trend is not likely to change and it’s not like traffic has come down because of competitive reasons. Traffic is slightly down because the car searches are down itself, right? It is — that’s what’s down. It’s not that our market-share of traffic is down.
Siddarth
Okay. Okay. Got it. Sir, lastly, on the thermal business, I mean, we have seen a very healthy 20% growth in the car trade vehicles sold, but the revenue growth seems to be a lot lesser than the volume growth. So what is sort of impacting here and how — when do you think that converges or picks up more going ahead?
Vinay Sanghi
Yes. I think the sole, as I said, repossession seems to have gone up. Our repossession share has also gone up. It’s now about 54% of vehicles of our inventory is repossessed, which are being sold. So it seems like the market trend towards the cyclical part of this — the cyclical view of it is that it seems that repossession should grow and continue to grow over the next few quarters. Therefore, Samil should be able to benefit from that. I mean that’s the way to think about it. Of course, Samil, again, the thing is any revenue growth dramatically affects profitability that has high operating leverage to its business cost growth is the whole year cost growth is 7%, right? So it does help when you have low-cost growth or margin and profitability shoots up.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dhruv from Edelweiss Mutual Fund. Please go-ahead.
Vinay Sanghi
Hello.. I think we can’t hear him. Hello.
Dhruv Bhatia
Hi, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Can you hear me now?
Vinay Sanghi
We can hear you.
Dhruv Bhatia
Yeah. Just firstly, I mean, just a data point I wanted to get is a bookkeeping question from the remarketing business. Could you just provide what would be the mix between the PV and CV in terms of volume and value — volume in terms for the quarter and for the full-year?
Vinay Sanghi
For the remarketing, CV tends to be for us, we’ve done this before around the 25% range roughly. I mean that tends to be the volume of CVs.
Dhruv Bhatia
Okay. And secondly, just on OLX, you know, the last six months, there was a lot of investments since the acquisition in terms of reducing scams on OLX in terms of starting to verify dealers. And if you could just talk a little bit about what our investments are already done and what all are required to be done to accelerate growth from where we are because from a profitability standpoint, I think we’ve reached a fairly good number, but from here on to drive incremental growth, what are those things that you need to do to get OLX to the next scale?
Vinay Sanghi
I think the product investments I was saying earlier, lot of investment productivity across different areas of the platform. The first sustainability of the platform, imagine there’s a platform where 180 million 190 million Indians come every year, right? That’s a massive number. I think probably one of the largest in the world of its kind, right, very few platform in the world get this number of users. So obviously, the kind of investment we do on stability and product and technology has got to be of global quality and global standards, right? We’re probably the best at world what we do, number-one.
Number two, when you look at safety or security in the platform or trust and safety as we Call-IT, there is continuous effort to make sure like every other platform in India does is making investments in providing an environment where customers can trade or buy products from each other in a trustworthy manner, right? And that’s a continuous effort. So the lots of AI tools technology, which we implemented over the last few months, enabling or improving further security or trust and safety on the platform. So it’s something we continue to do and that’s obviously helping the platform itself. We also are looking obviously in the coming months-to — as I said earlier, a lot of other tools and features so that customers can interact and sell and buy use products in a free easy manner. So that’s the intent. And that just continuous innovation going on there to improve or enhance the number of transactions done on the platform.
Operator
We request you to return the question queue for a follow-up question. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go-ahead.
Sachin Dixit
Hi, Minay, congrats on additional set of results. My first question is on basically new auto business side. Obviously, the growth has been good, industry growth is whatever, but the dynamics are favoring you. I wanted to understand competitive dynamics, right? Relatively, do you think you are gaining market-share over the competition or if yes, what do you think is driving? Are you doing some sort of strategic initiatives where you are creating new products, new benefits for your OEM and dealer partners?
Vinay Sanghi
Whom — yeah, we feel obviously we are continuously working on improving our product and so that we stay ahead of any other way to buy a vehicle, right, whether it’s our auto-finance product, which has gained traction on our platforms, whether it is other features we add for consumers. Our focus mostly, Sachy, honestly is to add things on helping consumers. If we help consumers, then the dealers and manufacturers automatically benefit, right? So we mostly add more-and-more features which help you as a consumer to buy a car or a two-wheeler in a simple easy manner, right? So whether — and like I said, one example is adding our auto-finance product. We started a year and a half, two years ago, which has now started getting us a lot of consumer engagement or different — every day there are small, small things on a product and tech we keep adding, enabling helping consumers find the journey a lot easier, right? And that’s a permanent effort. And as I said now with all the data and all the analytics in our business, how do we add AI as another way of helping a consumer buy a product or buy a vehicle online. So this continuous improvement in effort going on the technology product side. One of the biggest efforts for the year for us internally is further working on our product tech across our group, not just in the consumer group.
Sachin Dixit
Understood. On the same line, basically, are you also looking to cater to, let’s say, some of the newer formats of advertising that are emerging, right, let’s say, on social media, marketing, QSM marketing, etc., or do you have a play there in terms of video advertisement as well compared to the typical display?
Operator
Yes, sir, you are audible.
Aneesha Bhandary
We can hear you.
Operator
So you are audible.
Vinay Sanghi
Hello. We can’t hear. Hello.
Operator
Hello, not reachable. We’ll take the next question.
Aneesha Bhandary
I can hear deep. Hello, Deep.
Operator
The line is not. It’s not clear. Sure. I’ll take the next question. The next question is from the line of Nishit Jalan from Axis Capital. Please go-ahead.
Nishit Jalan
Yeah, hi,, congratulations on good set of numbers. Hi, how are you? Yeah. So two questions. Firstly, just wanted to get a sense on the remarketing business. You did mention that repositions have started to come back. Any numbers you can say are out-of-the total growth in auction volumes around 18%, what was the growth in repossessed and retail segment? Because what I remember, and just to — Mr, what has been the kind of decline in repossed vehicle that we have seen in the last three, four years? Because I remember that repossessed vehicle volumes have been coming down consistently, while you have scaled-up the retail volumes because of which your overall volumes have not suffered much. So if the recovery cycle plays out, just wanted to understand how — what kind of growth trajectory we can look into repossed vehicles in the next two, three years. So that’s the reason why I’m asking this question.
Vinay Sanghi
So it’s hard for to predict what might happen on repossession growth or other segment growth in the future. I’m not going to be giving guidance, but for reposition growth, how generally growth rates are similar across segments. Anisha, would that be correct? I mean, it’s not like repossession has grown faster than other segments. But generally growth rates are similar across all segments.
Nishit Jalan
So Vina, what I wanted to mean is if you look at, if you go back-in time when your auction volume used to be 60,000, 70,000 per quarter, three, four years back, right, then what used to be the reposessed and what the — right now the reposition has fully come back-in — no, that’s absolutely correct.
Vinay Sanghi
I don’t think reposition has come back to the volumes ever. It’s just that from the base it started growing. It doesn’t mean it’s come back to where it was. That’s the question.
Nishit Jalan
Just how I understand to what extent it has come back. So what is to be the run-rate earlier per quarter and what is it is now right now? So that’s what I’m going to understand.
Vinay Sanghi
Yeah, I understand. I’m not — I don’t think I have that answer of the question right now, but it will not come back to — if that’s the question. I mean, mean, it definitely has not.
Nishit Jalan
Okay. No, I’ll take it offline.
Vinay Sanghi
I think there is opportunity to grow even to come back to its original base, it will have to grow substantially from here. Yeah.
Nishit Jalan
Correct. And our take rate seems to have come down.
Operator
Sorry to interrupt. Can you please return to the question queue for follow-up
Vinay Sanghi
Let’s just finish this question. Sorry. Just go-ahead.
Nishit Jalan
Thank you. So just wanted to understand on this, our take rate in our — this segment has come down. Is it more of a function of the percentage take rate coming down or is it like the ASPs
Vinay Sanghi
In this ASP there is little in two-wheelers specifically and therefore and I think that’s just a reflection of the industry itself. But yeah, that’s the reason. It’s not a percentage, it’s probably the. Yeah.
Nishit Jalan
And I had one more question on new car. Can I add that or should I go back into the.
Vinay Sanghi
Okay, quickly. I think so.
Nishit Jalan
So it was more of an industry question. See, when you see our customers coming to your websitewale by, what according to your understanding are customers coming to the website, what are the top two or three things are a customer is coming and spending time on your website? What exactly are they trying to find? And why I’m asking this, now obviously you did mention that the BHP auto car, they are also a car jars kind of a thing, right? And if they also put on their website a lot of details around new cars, comparison and all those sort of things, don’t you think that some traffic will be divided and they might also start taking a bite of the overall advertisement pool or marketing pool from the OEM and the dealer side?
Vinay Sanghi
Okay. The first part is why do they come to or by? I think people come when they’re looking to buy a car or a two-wheeler to some — it was very significant purchase for anyone in their life-cycle, right? I mean, when you look at your house or your car, it’s probably a top one and two purchases you ever have. So it’s a highly involved decision to buy a product of this value in India. And therefore, you try and understand what car to buy from where to buy, what price to pay. Once you go through the hurdles on a platform like or, you probably try and understand how do I get my loan, can I get my loan sanctioned or probably even list my old car for-sale, so I know what that value is. You know, I think right from the time you start to understand that you want to buy a product to the time you actually get it delivered, you’ll be deeply integrated with Carvale and its dealer set or its manufacturer set to run into this process. And as I said, we are probably trying to move — over the years, we move more from an information provider to a more a transaction enabler, right? And I think the next transition of Carvale by will be to a transaction doer. Eventually will probably say listen, we press a button, buy a car and we delivered to you. So we’re moving from an information provider, transaction enabler to a transaction doer, and that’s the transition we are all making.
The other couple of places you mentioned are mostly in — they’re mostly like, as I said, enthusiast/places of content, right? And they’ve been around forever. I don’t think it changes market dynamics because they’re not new both of them, both of them been around for many, many years. And also been the scale of users is very, very different for different reasons. So the car value gets the user it has over many, many years because it provides a certain role when buys a vehicle, which — and VHP or that provide a different — or play a different role. So I don’t see — I don’t see that competitive just because we acquired. I don’t see those dynamics changing at all.
Nishit Jalan
Okay. Thank you so much and I’m on the best. Thank you.
Vinay Sanghi
Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arya from Exponent. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes, yes. Just a couple of questions. First on the consumable business. Now you’ve spoken about the operating leverage that is present in our business, right? And if you look at the classified business outside of India, dominant classified business in-car classified at north of 50% EBITDA margin. Even some of the categories where there are businesses which dominate a classified business, they operate at significantly higher margins, right? So if we were to continue to grow at the 20% rates or slightly higher than what we are anticipating. Would you say that we are quite far from a saturation of EBITDA margins in our business? And if we were to look at the number say three, four years down the line, what would be a realistic target of EBITDA margin that you would have in the car classified business?
Vinay Sanghi
I think not only the car classified business, I think across the automall order over the next few years, we have tremendous operating leverage in our business. Our cost don’t go up in relation to our revenue. Our major costs are only costs, which are mostly fixed in nature and non-variable. It’s fair to say that our margin is already getting best-in-class in India. We also believe that our margins will get better the coming years on whether it will reach — probably get best-in-class, not only India and best-in the world, just the operating leverage we have in our business. So feel very confident about margin growth. And we actually we’ve talked through this through last two, three years as well. I think what we’ve been able to demonstrate as a company is that margin growth has happened over two, three years continuously quarter-by-quarter and we don’t see any reason why that would not continue to happen in the future.
Unidentified Participant
Best-in the world is quite an aspiration, right? Like I said, the best-in the world are operating at significantly higher. So good to know this. Second, on the OLX piece, you know, while we have a very large base of users who come and use our platform, at least one big challenge in India has been monetization of users, right, where the average revenue per user has been fairly low for a lot of platforms. Do you — do you — what kind of challenges do you anticipate in monetization of your traffic on OLX? And what are the things that you’re doing to improve that? If you could just give us specific examples, that would be very helpful. Thanks.
Vinay Sanghi
I think on overall actually monetize two sets of users, the consumers and one of the dealers. So it is the ARPUs per user or the ARPU per dealer is something which is in our opinion, only likely to go up in the company, number-one, on both cases. And the way we feel the ARPU will go up, I mean, is principally around providing more products and services to same user, whether a consumer who is coming to sell or product or a dealer who sell coming to sell a product. The more we offer, the more ability we give you to perform transactions on the greater the ability to monetize, right, as far as we are concerned. So we believe that monetization is going to grow. Is going to go with increased products and services delivered to the user and ARPUs will go up as well. On the other hand, we also believe number of users will go up. So it’s a combination of all these things put together.
Unidentified Participant
But is there a specific number you have in mind, say, if you’re looking at new stars as an example here, is there a specific number that you have in mind that will be able to monetize the X percentage of the sale value of a particular transaction?
Vinay Sanghi
We obviously want to be very cost-effective for a dealer to sell cars on our platform, but we don’t have a specific target or goal in mind. We just feel that by offering more-and-more services and helping dealers sell more cars, which we do, we will keep increasing our ARPUs as well as, you know our number of users, both. So we actually think there is a limitless opportunity both on used cars or used products on OLX at this point. There is no target in mind. It just you could continuously do this for many, many years ahead. So plus you got to remember the industry itself, the used-car industry itself is growing and also the ARPUs of cars itself is growing or the particular size of cars are growing. So there are a number of market indicators also, which should help and benefit on used products itself.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The. The next question is from the line of Mr Sachit Dixit from JM Financial. Please go-ahead.
Sachin Dixit
I mean, sorry, my line seems to have no problem here. So I had just one more question, which was on OLX, right? So something seems to be not working on OLX clearly, right? So at the time of acquisition, we talked about this entity historically has grown around 20% in the last couple of quarters is around 15%. This quarter, we have dropped to 10%. Can you detail more of it like should we as invested community get understanding of what is happening, why are we where we are and why do you think that we will recover? Because otherwise the trend doesn’t suggest that we.
Vinay Sanghi
No, no, the trend actually suggests that because if you see — if you see the financials of previous year to this year, on the actual — on a yearly basis, OLEX has grown at 16%, 12% quarter-on-quarter quarter-on-year to the quarter, but annually it’s grown at 16%. So we actually feel very optimistic about Dolex and we actually think that it’s absolutely the right path to where it needs to go. I think what we are also saying is that it takes time to build products and services on a platform of 200 million, 190 million people coming. So what’s — what’s taken us time is adding products and services to what we do. We feel actually really optimistic about the revenue potential or monetization process, even the consumer potential or number of consumers coming, you know there’s lot of work gone on the 18 months from an M&A. Just to tell you also, ORX has been the highest profitability history. And it came from many years of loss-making background, right, many years of it. So there are lot of things which we had to do to get it right and get it here.
At the same time, grow users, grow monetization and good revenues. They’ve always grown. So optimistic, I think we feel lot of work on product and technology will be done for building future products and services, which is underway. Yeah. And then adoption on that. But we are very, very optimistic about where it’s going and where it needs to go. But and on the same line, basically our employee expense in OLX has dipped by almost 25% when compared to 2Q of this year, right? What is the neutral of this? Percentage, but no, I think that it was roughly INR20 crores in 2Q, it’s now INR15 crores. The cost. Yeah, it is just optimization, because when you do an M&A, you don’t really need — you don’t know what you need or not. I think we are all new to it in the first year or so. So it’s just little bit optimization, nothing more than that.
Sachin Dixit
Understood. Understood. Thank you and all the best.
Vinay Sanghi
Thanks. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sinduja from LKR Advisory. Please go-ahead. Yes, sir, you are audible. Please go-ahead with your question.
Vinay Sanghi
We can’t hear him.
Operator
Sir, your line is unmuted. Mr, please go-ahead with your question. It seems like the line is not audible. We’ll move to the next question. And the next question is from the line of Palak from MIV Investment Management. Please go-ahead.
Palak
Sir. Hi,. Congrats for the good set of results. So my question is again on OLH India. What I understand from the previous commentation is that last six months, there have been lot of efforts in improving the platform and now they are thinking about the monetization. But what I’m not able to understand is that now there are two-ways where we can increase the monetization of the platform. First is the existing revenue that we have for the revenue that is the ad listing fees and subscription maybe. But help us to understand what is our strategic plan, whether we are thinking of the first step that is to increase the monetization from our existing revenue stream, that is our advertisement or listing fees? And the next part is what are we thinking about the revenue? Can you give me a separate example? I mean, you gave — gave us an example of what are the efforts that we are taking, but how is it going to get converted into the monetization? And specifically, when we talk about — when we are we are talking about such a huge user base, what is prompting us from increasing the monetization part? Do you think that the customer sickiness will get impacted if — or there are other platforms that are performing well on this aspect? I mean, because of the competition aspect, we are not increasing the monetization?
Vinay Sanghi
Okay. The first part is OLX is very dominant in used products selling or buying for consumers like you and me or you know dealers selling these products. I don’t think from a competitive standpoint, there’s any platform in the country, which is even close to what does. As I said, has more than 30 million customers a month, which is unique — 190 million a year, which is just unique to itself and its brand. So that’s the first part of the competitive side of your question. The second part is what are we doing to increase the growth of revenue you’ve seen continuously over the last 15 to 18 months is a growth in the — in the current monetization models which are listing fees for consumers and dealers. We haven’t added any new revenue streams. It’s mostly the growth coming from what we’ve acquired and the current revenue stream and products and services which we offer. I think our objective is, of course to add new revenue streams to the business and continue to grow existing streams. The new revenue streams are products which you’re still creating. There are multiple products which anyway help you and me to sell a product on OLX or buy a product on OLX. And those are underway. We are still under product development. So in the next few quarters, they will start rolling out and you obviously expect increased monetization from them.
Palak
Okay. Okay. So the 17% growth that we are talking about, is it purely from the increase in the monetization because I assume that the —
Vinay Sanghi
Which — sorry, which growth. What number? Did you say?
Palak
It’s actually a mix of user base increase and a monetization. So could you help me understand that how much percentage was due to the user base increase and how much percentage due to the increase in the monetization?
Vinay Sanghi
There has been — I mean, we normally have very marginal rate increases. They’re mostly increases on more user engagement or user increases itself. The rate increases are very minimal.
Palak
So we should start accelerating and charging because potentially when we provide them because services will have to start it has been that path also. So there has to be a slight acceleration in terms of growth of the that we are planning to use of.
Vinay Sanghi
I think what you’re trying to do here is products and services to monetize that. We don’t necessarily think the best way to monetize is just increasing rate. I think the intent here is to keep on giving more-and-more for the user to do more-and-more transactions and therefore increase our revenues. I think that we’ll take you.
Palak
Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, we will take this as our last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Vinay Sanghi
Thank you all for joining this afternoon and we feel very enthusiastic and happy about the year gone by and also be optimistic about these are coming ahead. So thank you for joining and look-forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. Goodbye.
Operator
On behalf of Tech Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.