Castrol India Limited (NSE: CASTROLIND) Q2 2025 Earnings Call dated Aug. 06, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Kedar Lele — Managing Director
Mrinalini Srinivasan — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Nitin Tiwari — Analyst
Sabri Hazarika — Analyst
Dhaval Popat — Analyst
Nakul Dev — Analyst
Gaurav Jain — Analyst
Vipul Kumar Anupchand Shah — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our 2Q&1 edge earnings conference call for Castrol India Limited. Please note that all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and you can ask your questions after the opening statements. If you need assistance during the call, please press Star then zero on your touchtone phone to reach the operator. Please note that this call is being recorded. Also please note that this conference call may contain certain forward looking statements which are based on the belief, opinions and expectations of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risk and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.
We have with us today Mr. Kedar Lele, Managing Director, Castrol India Limited and Ms. Mrinalini Srinivasan, Chief Financial Officer, Castrol India Limited. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Lele for his opening remarks. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Kedar Lele — Managing Director
Good afternoon and namaskar to everyone. Welcome to Castrol India second quarter and. First half analyst call for 2025. Thank you very much for joining us today. As you might already be aware, our. Reporting follows the Jan to December calendar year. Hence it is the first half and Q2. But before we start, I am happy to introduce Mr. Nivasan to you today. She’s a CFO who’s been on board for over a week now and she comes to us with over 17 years of experience at PNG India where she held a range of finance leadership roles across business units and geographies including Asia, the Middle east and Africa. Welcome Mrinalini and could you introduce yourselves?
Mrinalini Srinivasan — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you Kiraz. Hi everyone. I’m very excited to be here. My first week has been a very warm and welcoming week indeed. In my last role I served as the Chief Financial Officer for Proctor and Gamble Hygiene and Healthcare company and I was also the Group Controller for PNG Group in India. I look forward to interacting with all of you over the due course. Back to you Kedesh.
Kedar Lele — Managing Director
Thanks Nalini. Welcome once again. That said, let’s get into the capstone. India’s performance in the 2Q and first half of 2025. We are happy to announce that we have continued our momentum from the beginning. Of the year into the second quarter with healthy performance. Our continued focus on innovation across products and services, broadening our distribution footprint and investment in our brand has really translated. Into growth in volumes. Despite the macroeconomic challenges and volatilities that you all know. This demonstrates the company’s resilient and diverse. Portfolio that helps us navigate these various market cycles. Some key points, revenue from operations from the second quarter 25 grew 7% year. On year to 1497 crore. EBITDA stood at 349 crore representing a growth of 8%. Tax in this quarter increased 5% year on year coming in at 244 crore and these numbers translate to half year in this manner that revenue for the. First half of the year also grew 7% to 2,919 crore. EBITDA stands at 657 crore up 7%. PAT grew at 6.5% and stood at 477 crore. Additionally delighted that board has recommended an. Interim dividend of rupees 350 paisa 3.5. Rupees per share subject to shareholders approval. The growth in top line is primarily being driven by expanding reach across rural markets and our increasing presence in industrial segment. This was further supported by sending associations with OEMs. Our disciplined expense management and operational efficiencies help maintain margins which reflect our ability to execute growth strategies without compromising on profitability despite headwinds from input cost, volatility. And of course the competitive markets overall. Our strategic focus is on bolstering our. Product portfolio as well as distribution network. And developing end to end solutions that combine service delivery with product sales aligned with the Vixit Bharat goals. The industrial segment is a major focus area for us as it is seeing. A robust double digit growth for the company. We have been able to establish strong customer relations and acquisitions through value led engagement. We brought our globally acclaimed metal working fluid, Hysol MB50 and Hisol 20x DB. Range to the Indian market through local production. This would enable faster delivery and superior value creation. Product launches such as Reskillo and Hisol serve now more than 100 customers across automotive, tube bearing and metal manufacturing sectors. Our chemical management services, what is called a CMS offering is gaining strong momentum, is now operational at multiple sites and. This model goes beyond selling lubes and chemicals. We take end to end responsibility across the chemical life cycle delivering efficiency, compliance. And value to our customers. This value added service is being received. Very well amongst the customers. Now let me touch upon our Bharat portfolio. Our Bharat strategy that we’ve been talking. About for last few quarters is serving. Well because in this strategy we laid out two pillars. One is to make our brand and. Our product more relevant for the belly of the market so larger consumer franchise gets exposed to capstone brands and then. Taking the brand to a wider distribution. Network to the rest of the country. So it means of India as well. As in rural areas. We’ve also digitized our distributor management system to the next level across our distributors as well as rural Castro sub distributors who help us deliver this reach consistently. Let me also talk about widening our market access through our multi channel approach. You remember I kept Talking about over 140,000 outlets in the past. Now we are present in over 160,000 and outlets including 32,000 plus bike points, over 11,000 multi brand car workshops and. A wider dealer network. We continue to expand our Castrol Auto service network to offer reliable services in the aftermarket. At present we support over 730 workshops in over 340 cities. Our entire AutoCAD bird range and AutoCAD product range includes shiners, sponges, cloths and. So on are now available across E. Commerce, modern trade and over 50,000 outlets in India. Volume growth has been seen across segments with steady volume performance in core sectors. Or core categories where we have either maintained or or expanded our market share. Our overall market share stands at over 20% and the key growth categories included commercial vehicles, specialties, bikes, cars, autocad products, B2B and especially industrial where we have now seen consistent growth for nine quarters and due to growth in industrial being at 13%. We are looking at building Castro into a service led deeply enabled mobility brand because we continue to leverage tech for both customer convenience and mechanic empowerment. Very very important and relevant is the flagship Mechanic connect app called FastCan which is being used by over 1 million mechanics in India and on many days in this quarter over 200,000 transactions were.
Recorded by these mechanics who are our big advocates in the market. We upgraded our distributor management system to enhance agility and transparency across channels and we also advanced our OEM relationships, sustainability and circularity agenda in the core. We are the first in my opinion. A large lubricant manufacturer who’ve been able. To not just develop but but commercially. Produce. First of its kind RRBO based. Engine oils for DS4 vehicles and this. We have done in partnership with the leading OEM and it will keep growing with more partners coming in to develop circular and redefining ecosystem in terms of initiatives towards our brand and consumer. Connect we concluded our Castrol Active relaunch campaign. Remember I spoke about it with HR. Case Delhi review prediction that means more than 258 million consumers in mass media and our brand building initiatives have continued. This quarter with our participation in Metrax and Valley Run 2025 where Castrol Edge. Powered the 300kmph Club of Supercars reaching. About 3 million biking and racing enthusiasts. At an overall level we’ve always taken. Pride in being at the forefront of cultivating industry leading norms and consequently we are well recognized for upholding these high standards. Our Padanga plant has received the Golden Peacock Award for Occupational Health and Safety. In fact, Padanga plant was last time. This time our Silvasta plant has received. The Golden Peacock Award. Correction there, but it tells you that. Consistently our plants keep receiving awards for. Being based on quality or safety. Last but not least, I should also talk about our annual report which all of you did appreciate and did take a look at last year’s annual report. One Platinum at the LSDT Spotlight Awards. All these initiatives support our strategy that. Revolves around our core strength Castrols brand value and the way the industry is evolving in general. We expect robust growth coming in from. Our industrial segment supported by our rural outfield. That I spoke about performance in the. First half of the year gives an optimistic indication for the full year looking ahead, our focus shall remain on delivering. High quality products and services to the. Automotive and industrial sectors. Our expanding network is really a testament to Castrol becoming more and more accessible. And affordable for consumers through the length and breadth of our country. Our overarching strategy is to deliver the opportunities in industrial Bharat and delivery which. We are confident will build sustainable value over the longer term. That’s all that I would like to update you about at this speaker. Thank you for your attention. We now invite you to share any. Questions, feedback or views as we open the floor for discussions. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 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. We’ll take our first question from the line of Nitin Tiwari from Philip Capital India. Please go ahead.
Nitin Tiwari
Hi, Good day. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. The first is around your volumes. If you can give us the volume number for the quarter and provide some more color on how the different segments have grown in this quarter in terms of automotive non automotive. I I understand that you gave a broad overview in your initial comments, but some more details would be appreciated. That is one and I’ll ask a second after that.
operator
Nitin, can you please mute your line? There’s some background disturbance on your connection. Thank you.
Nitin Tiwari
Yeah, sure.
Kedar Lele
Hi Sabin. As you remember I spoke about it last time. Also, our overall growth has been at 8% and to give a little more color to how each of the segments have grown. Our bikes and cars have been in high single digits. Our CVO has been at 8% again and our industrial has been at 30. And with that we’ve been able to. Get to the overall number being at eight. And we were also interested last time. In rural and this time as well. The rural has continued to grow at 12%. So with two of the speedboats in rural and industrial and with high single digit in automotive, we’ve been able to. Deliver 8% volume growth.
Nitin Tiwari
Thanks, very helpful. So 8% overall volume growth on a YY basis, Right, that’s what you mentioned. So are we looking at roughly about 66 million liters of oil? That’s the right number.
Kedar Lele
That’s correct. Absolutely right.
Nitin Tiwari
Great. My second question is around the media news which was around, which was around like, you know, carving out of Castro and by BP and investment in Castro. So just wanted to understand that what part of Castrol Global’s business is cast on India in terms of volume and profitability and what is the update on that front?
Kedar Lele
Okay, see at an overall level we. Do about little over 10% of the. Volume of Global Cat store and a little better than that in terms of profitability because our business is structured around. Two wheelers and cars which is really. More profitable part of the business versus the average trucks and the average profitability that you see in the segment. And hence our profitability is a little better than the 10% or thereabout for the global. So it is indeed a very important. Part of Castro Global being in South Asia and being in India. And we are also the listed entity. Now BP decision to carve out Castro is driven by the global competition that. Large oil and gas major faces. And it is the global CEO of BP has said this that they would want to retire the debt and they see in Capstone a good asset that can be monetized. We do believe that it is good for BP and is good for Capstone. Because Capstone has significant growth ambitions including. Growing our core mobility business, expanding our participation in distance applicants, of course, enhancing our mobility services and diversifying to data center fluid. All of these businesses are different from. The oil and gas business. And with this there’ll be a focus. On value creation for cash draw and. Hence it’s a good opportunity for the. Business to become more effective and innovative. So I have only that much information. As it becomes visible, the stock market and you’ll be the first person to get to know about it.
Nitin Tiwari
Great, thank you.
Kedar Lele
Thank You.
operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. In order to ensure that management is able to answer queries from all participants, kindly restrict your questions to two at a time. You may join by the queue for follow up questions. The next question is from the line of Sabri Hazarika from MK Global Financial Service. Please go ahead.
Sabri Hazarika
Yeah, good afternoon sir and congratulations on good set of numbers. So I have two questions. First question is you have mentioned that you have grown almost like 13% in the industrial segment, but at the same time your margins have also held up quite well despite the view that industrial generally has got lower margins. So can you throw some light on the industrial segment right now? What kind of like oils you are selling and if you’re getting some sort of like premium pricing for that, because in the past you have mentioned that metal cutting and all these are like higher margin products even in the industrial category.
So can you throw some more light on this?
Kedar Lele
Okay, and is there another question, Sabri?
Sabri Hazarika
Second question is now that. You are growing at say around 7, 8%. What is the overall, it’s a sectoral question. Overall growth in the on the lubricant segment as a whole and are you gaining market share rapidly in this current scenario?
Kedar Lele
So let me answer the second question first. That’s easier one and everyone knows those numbers. If you see the automotive limiting space as for Nielsen or some of the. Other rating agencies who do, the audit. Is expected to be in the range of three and a half to four and a half. That’s the kind of volume growth that we’ve been seeing on that. If we are growing by 8% at. An overall level, of course we are giving shares. So our share growth YTD has been about 40bps and it’s lower than what I would have expected because sometimes the audit agencies don’t pick up all of your growth. It’s a lagging indicator of your growth and we’ll see that in time to come. And hence with 7, 8% volume growth, I think we are well placed to keep gaining share despite being a market leader. So that’s the first part or the second part of your question. Now first part of your question is really interesting and I’m really happy Mr. That you kept a track on industrial being a lower margin segment. And while we are celebrating double digit growth on that, yet we have been able to develop profitability. So it comes with the dexterity of being able to manage different levers of the business and then using the benign. Environment that we have had on the product cost side and of course, some amount of localization. So what we used to produce in. India in the past versus what we are doing now for industrial is a different ball game because we’ve been able to localize. As I said in my opening remarks. Some of the high margin products being. Produced in our own factories and focus. Has been on offering CMS which is. Chemical management services which are high value, high return and great amount of dependability that customers have on our teams. That and expansion into sectors which are showing great promise in India includes from. Electronics manufacturing to aeronautical is what has been our focus. Now as this part of the business grows, would our margin delivery suffer or would take a bit of a hit? Answer is yes, but I want to operate between a guiding range of 21 to 24 and we are at the. Upper end of that guiding range at the moment. And if we operate within that, I think we’ll still be a fantastic stock. In a company to look out for.
Sabri Hazarika
Thank you so much for this explanation and wish you all the best.
Kedar Lele
Thank you.
operator
Before we take the next question, would like to remind participants to press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Dhawal Popat from Choice International Ltd. Please go ahead.
Dhaval Popat
Congratulations on the great set of results. I have a question regarding now that the new management has taken over the company. I understand the cashflow uses strategic pricing. It’s a forward looking pricing. That is what the previous CFO said and has done. So I want to understand further color on the pricing salary for the automotive lubricants. I understand you already in it for industrials. That’s my first question.
Kedar Lele
Okay, you have other question as well, Mr. Dawes.
Dhaval Popat
So the other question actually has two but I’ll restrict to only one. In the previous conference call you did guide about the 78 tests that you are doing for the data centers or lubricants for the data centers. I wanted to understand if there is a need for the development as well as how do you see the overall. Volumes in this space? If you can provide a color on that.
Kedar Lele
Okay, so strategic pricing that the dates we have spoken about in the past. Is really strategic pricing. Which means that Castro lubricants will continue to command a premium for the quality. That we offer and for the brand promise that it comes with. So even in automotive space the closed. Watchers would have realized that we have taken pride wing in the first half of this year whether it is on AXIV or some of our passenger car. Lubricants or even part of our commercial lubricants. So whenever we have been able to launch an innovation which comes with additional. Features, we have been able to take a little bit of uprising with that. So that has really worked. And that will continue to be our. Strategic decision and pricing strategy. Second is the data center, as I said last time, and let me reinforce that data center testing are quite rigorous and they go on for a few months. So I mentioned that we have been. Working with a couple of data center hyperscalers, and that partnership continues and the testing is on. And this is somebody who can do simple arithmetic could actually Decide that if 10% of data centers in India were to become coolant. So you can do two ways, and. I should talk about that again, that. You can do direct cooling of the chip through a coolant so that the pipes connect to the processors, or you can dip all the processors into a coolant tub and you can cool it. Depending on which method is chosen, a. Different volume of coolant will be required. Would we make enough margin on that? Globally, coolants make over a dollar per. Liter kind of a margin. So that’s just a number that I’m giving you from US or European market. So if the number runs in a few million liters, with 10 million or 10% of data centers shifting, then that would be the kind of number that. You could get to. But those are numbers that will start coming in once the industry changes, once the civil work happens in those data centers to start using coolants for temperature management. So it is still little far away. And I will of course announce them. The first customer we are able to acquire and make it happen. But suffice it to say that once technology progress has happened, we are working. Very closely with the hyperscalers and the data center operators. And when they make the decision, we. Will be at the front line of implementing those solutions with them.
Dhaval Popat
Okay, thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Shloka Mehta, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. So I just have two questions from my side. First, I wanted to understand, where do you see your growth coming in from over the next few quarters? And secondly, what kind of work are we doing in our industrial portfolio and what kind of margins do we make there? If you could shed some light on that.
Kedar Lele
Thanks, Ms. Mehta. Where would the growth come from? If you look at our last few. Years of performance, the growth has always comes in the core. And we’ve been able to move our business with the change in the automotive space. What do I mean by that 20. Years ago Castrol was known to be. A truck oil company, right? So if you remember, Castrol was always referring to crv. So people knew that Castrol is the CRV oil company. Then we launched the Castrol Active because two wheelers were growing. Aftermarket was launched, was large and then. Action and power one became the mainstay. And because it was consumer, you also. Saw those brands very, very often in mass media. Then we saw that the four wheeler were becoming more commonplace. People were, you know, more households were beginning to own four wheelers. So we brought in not just the gtx which was the most well known brand of lubricants from the US to the Australia, but we also got in. Magnate as well as Edge. So you saw Magnate in operating for the last 10 years plus and you saw Edge being relaunched last year with SRK. So you can see how the portfolio is shifting in favor of how the automotive space is undergoing the change. So in the future we will continue to stay focused on bike expansion. And today I spoke about it a while ago that more than 55% of the bikes sold in India are being sold in rural India. So if every household in rural India is aspiring to have a bike, those bikes look beautiful when they run.
And when they have to be taken to a mechanic, it’s a mess. Because in rural India you don’t find. Mechanics like you find in urban centers. So we are now focusing on that. Expansion because even if there was an. Easy revolution that’s upon us, this large that exists in India and the expansion that’s happening beyond Caribbean will continue to. Fuel the growth of the company. So that’s one example of how our. Focus on shifting spaces in automotive and our Bharat strategy will continue to fuel. The growth in the next few quarters to come. Now, industrial at an overall level, I’ll give you micro numbers industrial. So for example, if you are making a gross margin just for sake of. It, if you think about it, if. An oil company makes a dollar of. Margin gross margin from automotive average, they. Will make about half a dollar margin. That’s the kind of numbers that exist. At a global level. So if you were to keep expanding so a business that grows at 2x brings in half the level of margin, could still be a beautiful business to look at because the Delta will be much sharper. But does that affect the overall business to a certain extent. And that’s why the EBITDA pathway or the guideline between 21 to 24 could be very, very good for this company. For many years to come. I hope I have been able to. Answer your question Ms. Better.
Unidentified Participant
Yes, that’s it from my side. Thanks a lot.
operator
Thank you Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question please press star n1 on your phone. Now next question is from the line of Sana an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi sir, thank you for the opportunity. So my first question is what is the kind of invest investment is being pumped in our ruler push that is from a marketing budget and the other another question I have is what are our views and strategies on our on our non lubricant products like the ancillary product portfolio example accessories etc.
Kedar Lele
Okay, thank you. Both of them are relevant questions. So the first is investment in rural port happens at three levels, right? Because investment is not just in terms. Of funds but also resources, also people efforts and of course then the investment that you make in marketing. So when we were to expand in Google we first appointed our sub distributors. So now we have about thousand sub distributors across India. Those thousand sub distributors bring in dealers where the numbers are much larger one is to 30 ratios. So you can imagine that about 30. 35,000 retailers come into our reach. Then there is investment in creating what I call and what we very proudly call as Castrol Quick Lube chain stations. And these are what exist in rural India. Now I’m not talking about numbers as yet but I’ll talk about numbers later in the year when they reach a sizable potential. But those are Castro presence in the. Rural area and there’s a capex involved in that. Then comes the marketing spend that we do for Bharat and if you look at our balance sheet and if you look at our numbers we spend between 3 to 4% of our turnover in advertising and sales promotion. And the third part of this investment goes into mechanic advocacy and training because most mechanics do get some amount of. Training from our side under they also. Get some amount of training in terms of their capability building information on new. Kinds of machines and businesses that they should be handling new kinds of pollution. Knobs and the kind of oils which. Are required in the in the latest. Machines and all of that also requires. Investments which is which gets funded from our ASP numbers which I spoke to about. Now second question non lubricant we are very excited about our AutoCAD range of products and last year I can tell you that in the first half of this year we have sold 100% more volume than what we did in the whole of last year. So that should tell you the excitement that we have had in the month of June only on E Commerce, we sold about 27,000 pieces of auto care. Products which means that the Castro is a lot more visible, has opportunity to. Interact with customers beyond lubricant and will. Also drive brand equity in the time to come.
operator
Sana, does that answer your question?
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Thank you so much sir and congratulations once again. Thanks a lot.
Kedar Lele
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Nitin Tiwari from Philip Capital India. Please go ahead.
Nitin Tiwari
Thanks for the opportunity again. Sir. My question is actually related to the ethanol impact on automotive engines. So there’s a debate going on around how the economics of ethanol impact board could be impacting automotive engines. So just wanted to understand are our products also evolving to address those issues? And have you introduced any product lines or have you made any changes in the product as such? I mean to address that concern that like you know, consumers might have. So that’s, that’s one. Secondly, if you can also again help us understand your sales mix right now in terms of you can break it down for as of this quarter automotive between personal mobility and CV and then what portion is industrial in the overall mix right now?
Kedar Lele
Yes, yes. Okay, understood. Yeah. We have spoken about in the past. And I’ll do that to you again. Okay. So first is does ethanol impact Indian performance? See all of us as consumers and as conscious consumers must realize that ethanol. Mixing is a requirement that government of India has put forth. And if you look at some of the other countries in the world, including Brazil, ethanol goes up to 40, 50%. Of the fuel economy. It does have an impact on engines. Performance, but that’s what OEMs work with. So most of our automotive brands in. India are preparing engines which can handle flex fuel. And with that the requirement for engine oil also changes. So we have been working with OEMs. Our products are capable of handling E20, E30 and that description does come on the package. So you can be rest assured that. The evolving requirements that consumers have from their bikes in terms of ethanol linked fuel will be taken care of as. Long as they’re putting Castrol in their machines. So put Castrol and don’t worry about. The performance is what I will say. Second is the sales mix for the latest quarter which is Q2. Or you can also take no oil level apples. Mobility has contributed to possible 43%. Cereal is about 44% and industrial has been about 12%. That’s our contribution for the.
operator
Nitin. Does that answer your question?
Nitin Tiwari
Yes. Water?
Kedar Lele
Yes.
operator
Nitin, we are unable to hear you. Nitin, I think you’re on mute. Since there is no response, we’ll move on to the next question from the line of Nakul Dev from ND Investments. Please go ahead.
Nakul Dev
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. Just had one of the questions. Yeah, I just wanted to understand what your advertising, advertising expenses for this quarter. Also have you taken any price hikes. And have you added any new OEMs? That’s all I want to understand.
Kedar Lele
Okay. Our advertising experience for the quarter is in the same range bound and the. Exact amount is is 46 crores which. Is actually a bit lesser than what we did in the days. But for the first half of the. Year our advertising expense is higher by 20%. So if you are watching our videos, you would have heard me say that we are going to be bumping up our advertising and sales promotion expenses at the beginning of the year in order. To support the growth momentum. And we have been able to do. That in the dates we did have HRKs campaign for Edge and hence we had spent a little more in last year. But this year in Q2 we have been able to restrict it to about 46 crore. So that’s exactly for the driving expense that you asked for. Second, have we taken a price hike? Yes, we have. Selective price hikes have been taken across the portfolio. There have also been a few cases of price drops in our drivelines and specialties and coolants. But the selective price hike that we’ve taken has given us about 1.5% kind of delta only coming from price in this quarter. Having said that, a new oem, there is no new brand of oem but we have started working for a range of vehicles with newer motors and with Dada. You know, we’ve been working enormously in. That case. So we’ve been working with Tatas in the past and. With them the partnership is deeper. But there’s no new OEM. There are not many OEMs. We don’t work with Koreans at the moment which I hope we will be. Able to make an entry into in the time to come.
Nakul Dev
Okay, perfect. That answers all my questions. Thank you once again.
Kedar Lele
Thank you, Mr. Dev.
operator
We’ll take our next question from the line of Gaurav Jain from ICIC Prudential Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Gaurav Jain
Hi sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I have a question on other income from a run rate perspective, what we have delivered in this quarter is on the lower side. So if you can help us understand. And similarly the working capital was also a little higher. So is Both linked or how should we be looking at both these things?
Kedar Lele
Thanks. I must say congratulate you for that observation. Indeed, other income has gone down, but. You remember that when I announced the. Last quarter result, there was a special dividend amount by us and that took. A large part of our cash reserves being distributed to shareholders. So with that our interest income came. Down by about 8 crores. So that is a big impact on our income. We also had a sale of a property in the past quarter which is not there anymore. And hence what you’re seeing is like for like reason, Lower Nile and crores on the other income. So that’s your first question. What is the second question you asked? I did not make a note.
Gaurav Jain
Working capital, if you look at it…
Kedar Lele
See two things are happening. The volume growth is upon us and when the volume grows you do increase the inventory. And there have been, there have been. Also an abnormal supply situation in Southeast Asia. Exxon has taken down their refinery for. Maintenance which meant that we had to look at other sources as well as. Stop a little more of base oil to be able to be able to. Meet the market demand. And hence our stock went up a bit. We also compensated it with some amount. Of our trade payables. Trade receivables have also gone up a. Bit because of expansion into B2B, expansion. Into industrial and some amount of disruption. That we saw in J and K. But these are momentarily, you know, these are temporary changes and we’ll come back to our most efficient working capital that. You are used to seeing in a while.
Gaurav Jain
That was very helpful and explanatory. Sir, just one follow up on other income. So should we be expecting this to be the new run rate is one question. And second sir, if we look at the cash position that we have, it is upwards of 860 odd crore that we have. So 860 crore should lead to higher than 10 crore per quarter. Sir, other income if we would have invested in any safety deposit type of instrument also. So if you can elaborate on this please.
Kedar Lele
So you should expect this to be a run rate in the future. And your shah would have also picked up that earlier our cash position was higher by about 550 crores which is. The dividend, special dividend that we paid out. So on an average a large cash. Generating company with the FD rates where. They are and this morning monetary policy and the three rate cuts that you. Have seen in this year would also bring down the FDs to the, to. A lower level than what we were all used to. But going forward what you’re seeing in other income should be the expected run. Rate in the future.
Gaurav Jain
That was very helpful, sir. Congratulations. And all the best. Thank you.
Kedar Lele
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star N1 on your phone. We’ll take our next question from the line of Vipul Kumar Anupchand Shah from Sumangal Investments. Please go ahead.
Vipul Kumar Anupchand Shah
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Would you repeat the volume figures for this quarter? And what was the same for corresponding. Quarter of last year and last quarter also? Thank you.
Kedar Lele
So this quarter our Overall volumes are 66 million. They are up by 5 million. So last year, same time was 61 million. And Q1, the last quarter was I think 62 million. Correct.
Vipul Kumar Anupchand Shah
Okay, sir. Thank you very much.
Kedar Lele
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of the call. On behalf of Castrol and India Limited, I thank you all for joining this conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Wish you a good day ahead. Thank you.
Kedar Lele
Thank you.