IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd (NSE: INDIAMART) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated Apr. 29, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Avijit Vikram — Head of Investor Relations
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal — Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal — Whole-Time Director
Jitin Diwan — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Sachin Salgaonkar — Analyst
Amit Chandra — Analyst
Swapnil Potdukhe — Analyst
Nikhil Choudhary — Analyst
Abhishek Banerjee — Analyst
Presentation:
Avijit Vikram — Head of Investor Relations
Foreign.
Avijit Vikram — Head of Investor Relations
Ladies and gentlemen, I am Abhijit Vikram, Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd. I welcome you all to the company’s Quarter 4 NFY 2025 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions once the presentation concludes. Joining us today from the management side we have Mr. Dinesh Agrawal, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Vijay Agrawal, Full Time Director, Mr. Jatindeevan, Chief Financial Officer and Mr. Pratik Chandra, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today’s call may be forward looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties.
Kindly refer to slide number three of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Ganesh Agal for his opening remarks. Thank you and over to you Sir.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal — Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer
Good evening everybody and welcome to India Mart quarter four and FY 2025 earnings webinar. We have circulated our earnings presentation which is available on our website as well as stock exchange websites. We would be happy to take any question afterwards and here are the highlights. India Mart has delivered a consolidated revenue from operation of rupees 355 crores in quarter four and rupees 1388 crores for the full year representing a year on year growth of 13% and 16% respectively. Collections from the customers have grown to Rupees 541 crores for the quarter representing about 12% year on year growth and 1626 crores in FY25 representing a year on year growth of 10% on the consolidating basis in quarter four our unique business inquiries were 27 million representing about a 10% yearly growth.
Total number of paying suppliers stood at 2,17,000. Net supplier addition in the quarter was 2,139 which is slightly better than the last quarter. We are continuing to take measures to reduce the elevated churn in the silver customer first year bucket and onboarding high quality businesses as paying customers. We continue to make changes in our products and services for the better quality of leads with better qualification of buyers. Our Platinum and Gold subscribers which constitute about 50% of our customer base and about 75% of revenue continues to have low churn and robust ARPU growth as well.
We remain dedicated to continuously improving the quality and optimizing the user experience on our website and on our mobile platforms to maximize the value delivered by the platform. Now I will hand over the Call to Brijesh to update about Busy Infotech. Thank you. And over to you, Brijesh.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal — Whole-Time Director
Hi. Good evening everyone. Firstly, I would like to share with you that Busy infotech has amalgamated with the two other wholly owned subsidiaries of India Mart Projects Online Private Limited and hello Trade Private Limited. This amalgamation is effective 1st April 2023 and the numbers therefore for the last two years have been restated. On the business front, Busy has done a net drilling of 32.8 crores in quarter four and 94.3 crores in the entire financial year. These numbers also include an impact of approximately 7 crores and 10 crores respectively. Due to the change in the payout structure of the partners that we had shared last time, the normalized year on year growth for both of these excluding the impact of this change is 42% and 21% respectively.
The revenue from operations stood at 18.4 crores for Q4 and 65.8 crores for the entire year. And if you were to normalize these numbers and calculate the growth rates, it would be an annual growth rate of 16% and 18% respectively. Deferred revenue stands at 72.3 crores. Busy also generated cash flows of rupees 8.8 crores in Q4 and about rupees 23 crores in the entire year from operations. During this quarter, Busy also sold 8,000 plus licenses taking the total count of licenses sold at about 3 lakh 96 thousand. The new licenses sold in the entire year are approximately 33,000.
We continue to enhance the product and increase our growth rates in the coming quarters and coming year. With this, I will hand over the call to Ditin so that he can discuss about the financial performance.
Jitin Diwan — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you sir. Good evening everyone. I will take you through the financial performance for the quarter and fiscal year ending March 2025. Consolidated collection from customers was 541 crores in the fourth quarter and 1626 crore on a full year basis representing Y and Y growth of 12% and 10% respectively. Consolidated deferred revenue stood at 1678 crore, an increase of 17% on a buy and Y basis. IndiaMART standalone collection from customer for the quarter were 506 crores and full year were 1526 crores both registering Y and Y growth of 9%. Standalone revenue from operations stood at 336 crore for the quarter and 1320 crore for the year registering YNY growth of 12% and 16% respectively.
Our growth in revenue was primarily driven by improvement in realization of paying suppliers EBITDA of India Mart standalone business stood at 133 crore for the quarter and 513 crore for the full year, representing 40% and 39% of margin respectively. Margin continued to be elevated on account of saving arising from lower customer acquisition and operating leverage. Margins are anticipated to gradually normalize in coming quarters as we focus on measures to increase growth. Consolidated net profit for the quarter was 181 crore, which includes a fair variation gain of around 59 crore on account of revaluation of our investment in M1 Exchange.
Consolidated cash generated from operations was 271 crore in quarter four and 623 crore on a full year basis. Consolidated cash and treasury balance stood at 2885 crores as on March 31, 2025. Also, Board of Directors have recommended a final dividend of 30 rupees per share for FY24 25 and a special dividend of rupees 20 per share aggregating to a total dividend of rupees 50 per share, subject to approval of shareholders. Thank you very much. And now we are ready to take any questions over to you.
Questions and Answers:
Avijit Vikram
We will now begin the Q and A session. If you wish to ask a question to the panelists, kindly raise your hand and allow camera and microphone access. Alternatively, you may type your question in the chat menu and we will revert on it. Please restrict to two questions so that we may be able to address questions from all the participants. We will wait for a couple of seconds while the question give assembles.
operator
First question is from the line of Sachin from BofA. Hi Sachin, please go ahead with your question.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Hi, good day. Can you guys hear me?
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Can you speak a little louder?
Sachin Salgaonkar
Okay, perfect. Is this clear now?
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Yeah, yeah, better.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Okay, great. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. First question this is regarding your net ads. Clearly your net adds addition is close to around 2000 or lower for last seven odd quarters. So wanted to understand some of the steps taken by you guys to reduce churn any time frame we should have in mind where we could start seeing an improvement in the overall net adds and hence revenue for you guys.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Okay, next.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Okay, second question. I just wanted to understand the mix for platinum and gold users. What we are seeing for few quarters is clearly your churn being high and as a result of it, you know, collections growth slowing down, contribution from the not so the smaller customers getting down. So why is the mix of platinum and gold not increasing in a proportion of total revenues? Presume it’s range bound in the range of 75 to 80% only. So wanted to understand, should we see this proportion increasing because the revenue from other set of users is going down?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, so this is the easy one. Let me take that first. I think when we started telling you about this, I think the first time we told you that what is the Gold and Platinum total contribution, it was about 72% if I remember correctly. And then it became to 74 odd percent and now it is about 75 plus percent. So I think in slowly and slowly the as the number of customers have not grown, the percentage of Golden Platinum revenue contribution is actually inching up quarter on quarter. So there is no, no issue on that side.
And whatever growth in collection that you are seeing, largely all of that is coming from Gold and Platinum. Just to repeat, Gold and platinum accounts for about 50 of our total customer base and 75% of our revenue now more than 75% of our revenue now. Now coming to the 7 quarters of reduced net customer addition of about 2000 plus minus. Yes, I think the first few quarters, about 4 quarters. We initially focused on service levels, what kind of customer onboarding and those areas, however that didn’t really do any breakthroughs. So then we started to look at the product market fit again at a deeper level and we have found certain changes to be done.
In the last two quarters we have done multiple changes, few. I have already told you one where the number of times a buyer was being introduced to a supplier was about 6.5 or so. Now this has come down to 3.8 or so. The second part is earlier we used to make lot of inquiries even if they were low intent buyers. I mean if somebody said I am interested in this product but not really filled the quantity or not really filled the specification, then also we used to make that as an inquiry or RFQ. Now we are doing a double check either by WhatsApp or by call and then only making that as an rfq.
And we are not. By doing that we are getting a lot more. Almost 80% of our RFQs today have the quantity and specification well defined and filled by the buyer, which has started to show up anecdotally in our Gold and Platinum customers. However, this has resulted into lower number of unique business inquiries, little lower number of unique business inquiries and that actually showing up as a demand because now the good quality inquiries are much more in demand. Finally, since this most of these good quality inquiries are being consumed by Golden Platinum, I think we continue to see a good healthy improvement in renewal rates on the Gold and Platinum side of the renewables and there has not been any decline further in the last two, three quarters on that side.
So I think we are doing enough things. But have we been able to fix the churn at the Silver Monthly or Silver Annual at the first level? We have not yet and it will take probably another few quarters before we can, before we can go to that. Some of the leading indicators that you can see if you look at the repeat rate of the buyers in this particular quarter has slowly inched up to almost 57.5% or so. So there are some leading indicators which are, which are there that the product has started to improve. Well, but first year retention continues to be a challenge and we are fully committed to solving that out in the times to come.
Thank you.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Thanks Dineshi. Very clear. Just one quick follow up out here. How should one think about your margins in the time frame your net adds remains at these levels? Because when I look at the margins for last seven quarters and I do get there is a quarterly seasonality but they are anywhere between 29% all the way to 43%. So is there a sort of a range one needs to be aware about from a margin perspective?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, you can answer.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks Sachin for your question. So on margins as you rightly said it continues to be elevated at about 40% range plus minus 1 or 2% here and there. So till the time we are confident on solving the churn and doubling down on the gross sides it will be continue to look like 38, 40% only. And once we do the like the pushback on the gross ads and push the battle on gross ads it will come down to a sustainable margin of about 33 to 35% which we have been maintaining in the last few quarters.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Great, Thanks a lot.
operator
Thank you Sachin. Next question is from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Hi Amit, please go ahead with your question.
Amit Chandra
Hello.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Yeah, hi Amit, we can hear you.
Amit Chandra
Yes sir.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Amit, your voice is very feeble. Can you speak louder? We are not able to hear Amit.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Sorry Amit, we still cannot hear you.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Maybe we can come back to Amit if someone else is in the field.
operator
Sure. We’ll take next question from Swapnil from JM Financials. Hi Swapnil, please go ahead with your question.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Hello, can you hear me?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yes, please go on.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Hi. So my first question is regarding your unique business inquiries delivered. Obviously they are down 8 to 9% in Q on Q and you mentioned that you’re delivering the inquiries to Less number of suppliers right now compared to what you were doing earlier. Right. 6.5 coming down to 3.8. But my question is like, have you started getting any feedback from the suppliers as to better convergence now compared to the previous or is it still we are yet to see any meaningful results on this side? I understand that as a platform you may not have the complete data, but certainly you will be discussing with your paying suppliers on this, you know, on this side.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah. So anecdotally I think we are getting good feedback. Even at the platform. There are various feedback mechanisms that give us a leading indicator that customers are liking what we are doing. They are not liking the reduced number of inquiries because they are, they cannot imagine the competition has been reduced for them. So for them, first comes the quantity they will, whether the conversion has improved or not. That particular piece. While anecdotally people are. Very few people are ready to admit that most people, most people’s behavior will tell us when they upgrade and renew, that they are happier.
Because in general, nobody likes to really admit that the platform is working very, very good. At least to us, to you. They will still tell you the truth. But our leading indicators tell us that whatever we have done in the last four, five months since the October board meeting has resulted into something meaningful. And we still have few works in progress which we should be able to do over the next couple of months. As I had asked in the month of October, that give us three, four quarters to. Because now that we have started to focus purely on the product side until, unless I am fixing that, I’m not going to invest heavy money on the customer acquisition or any kind of advertising.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Understood. But my question just to extend that, will it be possible, I understand right now that may not be the focus, but going forward, if there are better conversions for the suppliers, you know, when you deliver less, when the competition is less for them, will you be able to pass on significant pricing to them? I mean, would you, would it be possible for you to take significant pricing hikes, at least to those people who made, who might be benefiting from this?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
That’s already visible. If you see in the financial top 10%, ARPU is up 17%.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Okay, but what about the gold customers? I mean this is, this is, this.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Is almost like a platinum customer on a gold customer, Whenever it comes up, we will let you know. You know, even the overall ARPU is up 11%. So we, we are working in that direction. But I mean, it’s too early for me to admit.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Okay, understood. The second question is also on the traffic side, now if you see the, the total traffic that you share, right. That number continues to remain weak. I mean for the full year itself growth was hardly 1 or 2%. Now one is like why, why that the number of hits that you are getting on your website or your mobile app, lukewarm. Secondly, are there any plans to invest on the ANP side, you know, to create more awareness about the platform or some other measures that would help you increase the number of hits on, on your platform?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, I mean we have started to do certain experiments on the advertising side, whether it is online advertising or whether it is affiliate based customer acquisition or whether it is some video based. So I think over the next two quarters or so you will see some pilot projects going on. On the, on that side we are, while we speak, I’m still doing some, some pilot project, but they are not significant enough for me to tell you at this point of time. Maybe next quarter.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Okay, but these projects will not have a meaningful impact on your margins per se because you just now said like your margins.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
They will, they will, but as of now they are not going to have any meaningful impact on this particular quarter. If they are going to have, if we are going to scale them significantly, then we will come back and tell you first before doing that.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Understood. And for to check on the generates, like can you just give a breakup of how the generates have been across the different types of supplier categories this quarter and how, just to get a sense as to how they have moved, you know, over the last three four quarters.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, this. So golden platinum remains at around 1%. That, that used to be under 1%. Now it is about 1% per month. Silver monthly is about 7 odd percent 6 to 7% and silver annual is about 3 to 4%.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. And just something on the busy side because I see that the number of licenses sold seem to increase this quarter by a decent number. Earlier we used to around 6 to 7,000 licenses per quarter. Now that number has increased to 8,000 plus. I think there has been some increase in the realization side also. So any special efforts that you would have you taken on that side or like something which is working on the busy side, Would you like to call out something on that side?
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
So when you look at the number of licenses sold generally Q3 in any given year is a big quota for this business. And you know, Q4 and Q1 typically are the best performing quarters. And therefore we started to see an uptick in Q4 in terms of licenses sold. And you know, so this obviously is one factor which has resulted into an increase in overall licenses. Second, obviously there are you know efforts being placed on how do we grow sales and some of those efforts essentially have started to produce results overall on the margin side or the arpu, you know going up.
We’ve been able to improve the overall renewal rates within the business over the last two years. That has been a good ramp up of percentage of customers renewing their subscription. Plus there have been you know, minor updates or changes in the pricing and some bit of that has started to come in into the overall output that you get to see here.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Just to get a sense as to how we would our product will be priced compared to the competition. Any any sense on the busy side like what tally or know Margo. So what will be the difference on that side and how much scope do you think we can see on the realizations?
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
So if we look at you know very like to like product comparisons. So the difference and I’ll benchmark this against tally first which is the market leader here. So we would be about 75% of the pricing that tally typically offers. And I’m just giving you a ballpark average on the let’s say the the highest selling product that tally would have versus highest selling product 15 and 18 is about correct. So that is how we are priced on the first time license buy when you do in the first year. From the second year when you look at the renewal prices we would be equal to or slightly higher in terms of the annual recurring prices at this point in time.
Swapnil Potdukhe
So do you see any scope for improvement on the relations on a consistent basis for some few more period or like since you’re especially on the renewal side if that is since you’re already on par.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
We think that there is scope for us to keep improving on both the counts of ARPU as well as the sentence.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. Good. Thanks a lot for your time and always.
Brijesh Kumar Agrawal
Thank you.
operator
Thank you.
Avijit Vikram
So we have a question from the chat box now from Mr. Pankul Sood. We have nearly 3000 crores of cash plus investments on the book. Are we looking at any acquisitions and if not why not to do a buyback or a bigger dividend.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I think we maintain consistent position on our capital allocation policy. Out of the 3000 crore about 1800 crores is 1700 crores is deferred revenue and customer advances which are our liability side. So that leaves us with about 1100 odd crores. Out of the 1100 crores we typically maintain safety cash of about whatever 500, 600 crores of safety cash and then comes either we invest or acquire or we return back. So in the past also if you see over the last four four year period or five year period I think we have returned a fairly good amount of cash back to the shareholders Fairly good amount of the cash I because this year on year that number has changed based upon the buyback and the dividend and this year also the board has approved a 20 rupees special dividend and 30 rupees final dividend altogether about 50 rupees per share dividend which amounts for about 300 plus crores of dividend.
So I think we are going as per our past performance and past stated policy as well as the same logic either we invest or we return.
operator
Thank you sir. Next question is from the line of Nikhil Chaudhary from Nubama. Hi Nikhil, please go ahead with your question.
Nikhil Choudhary
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. First question on supplier edition Denisa we have again moved to net subscriber being positive after the last time we have seen decline is it fair to say that Q3 was anomaly and the subscriber addition trend will again go back to 1,000 to 3,000 between those ranges with ARPU growth of let’s say high single digit and do you maintain your guidance of collection growth being less than 10% more or less mid single to high single digit.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
See these are uncertain times at 2:3,000 plus miners I’m almost unable to really comment whether we’ll be able to maintain plus 2000 or because every quarter there are some kind of seasonalities and and we are doing a lot of experiments to acquire this kind of customer, not to acquire this kind of customer and in that those experiments there is possible mistakes and possible hiccups that are possible. So until unless we we really break the 5,000 barrier per quarter I don’t think we should be very fixated on +1000 or +2000 because if you really see for the entire year we have been only able to do full of 2000 only so I’m really not not confident to give you any answer as of now.
I mean I’ll take another few quarters when I can give you answer on that side. On the ARPU side I think we are far more confident and we have been guiding that whatever collection growth or whatever revenue growth that we are getting and we continue to target around 10% there you can say that quarter two was an anomaly where we were just 4, 5% but otherwise from the earlier 14, 15% collection growth I think we have denormalized or normalized to 9 10% but that will continue to be our target until we fix the consistent customer growth.
And all of that is going to then come from the ARPU only.
Nikhil Choudhary
Got it sir, just a follow up on the point you mentioned that we are now thinking on the type of supplier to acquire. Right. Is the behavior of this suppliers is different from what we were acquiring earlier. While I understand the churn won’t be visible now but let’s say in terms of behavior on the platform, how active they are, how responsive they are or any other internal metrics you are checking to differentiate between the newly acquired customer compared to what you were doing let’s say two three quarters back.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, I think supplier engagement on our platform continues to be on almost in the best ever bracket. But whether so there is enough demand for good quality of buyers and good number of quantity of buyers. How we are able to deliver more and more of the same quality buyers because any any good quality inquiry gets sold out on our platform in less than couple of minutes or couple of hours. So I think there is enough demand and enough market for good quality buyer. I think as soon as we crack the repeat buyer behavior I think we we should be good to go there.
Nikhil Choudhary
Got it sir. Second one just want to understand basic math behind it and sustainability of the top 10% ARPU growth. This top 10% ARPU growth had been if I’m not wrong, more than 15% for quite a time with let’s say unique business inquiry on an average being lower than the overall ARPU growth. Do you think this 15% plus type of ARPU growth at least for let’s say gold and platinum is sustainable or you think there will be a ceiling the way we have seen for let’s say ADA category.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I mean it’s a very future looking answer that you are looking for. You know the past performance says that for the past five quarters we have been upwards of 10% to growth for the top 10%. Whether it will be 15 or 16% I can’t say. But if you remember I gave you last year in the beginning of the year that we have now successfully implemented our variable pricing for the platinum customers which works across the industries which different differs across the industries and I think that has resulted into this consistent ARPU growth on the platinum customers.
That I.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Understand at that point of time we did tell you that this should result into a multi year 10% plus kind of an ARPU growth for platinum customer. But whether that will be 15% plus or not I cannot really assure you. But for 10% plus, I think we are quite confident that for the next one year or so that should be upwards of 10% because we implemented the differential pricing sometimes around year, year, a year and a half back.
Nikhil Choudhary
Got it, sir. That’s it from my side. Good luck for coming, period. Thank you.
operator
Next question is from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Hi Amit. Please go ahead with your question.
Amit Chandra
Hello, can you hear me now, sir?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, very well.
Amit Chandra
Okay, thank you and thanks for the opportunity. So my first question is on the, on the collections growth that have slowed down, obviously we have done slightly better in this quarter. But I am saying from an overall year perspective, the collections have slowed down. So maybe, you know, you mentioned that obviously churn is one of the reasons for the, you know, for the slow growth in collections. But is it also because of the, the, you know, the platinum and the, you know, the platinum and the gold, customers are opting for more single year, you know, single year kind of renewals versus like multi year earlier.
And also if you can share what percentage of your top one and top 10 customers are going for single year versus like multi year in this year versus last year.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
So this single year and multi year, you can go to that slide where with the deferred revenue being standalone. Deferred revenue. Yeah. So that has not changed this. The 12 month. What gets recognized in 12 months and what gets recognized after 12 months remains consistent at 63, 64% which means there’s no change in the single year versus multi year.
Amit Chandra
So saying that the number of customers who were opting for a three year and a versus one year remains same, there is no change in that, right?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah. As per financials also this is proven that there is no change.
Amit Chandra
Okay. And so in terms of the mismatch between the ARPU growth versus the collections growth. So obviously the ARPU growth is being fueled by the top one and top 10 customers. So if there is value like being derived from the platform, then what’s the reason that it’s not getting reflected in terms of the collections work? Obviously Churn is one reason, but churn now seems to be a permanent problem. So we have not seen any progress on that front. So can we assume that this 8 to 10% growth is the new normal?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I refuse to assume that I will continue to work my way back to the growth period. As I said, currently, if you see all of that 10% growth is coming from ARPU because there is almost 0% growth coming from Customer Edition. And can we bring pure ARPU land growth to, you know, 15%? Yes. Can we sustain that for a very long period? No. If we fix the production, can we sustain a 20% growth for a very long period? Yes. We have seen that in the past 7, 8, 9 years, last 10 years, we have grown from 50,000 customers to 225,000 customers or so.
So in a, in a media subscription business, I think or a media advertising business, it’s the number of customers and the ARPU goes hand in hand. If you really see the top heavy media like television etc, even they will stagnate if there is not enough number of customers. But if the classified platform which becomes very, very small, like Craig List or something, even there the revenue stagnates. So the healthier mixes, we believe a very healthy mix of revenue and customer growth is, I mean ARPU and customer growth is 10% and 10%, you know, whether you can do 15 plus 10 or 10 plus 15.
But I think 10 and 10 is a great mix that can give you a multi year growth or a multi decade growth. So we will continue to try and achieve that. It is taking time. But every product market fit with every five year period. In the current changing times of technology and customer expectation. I think the organizations which are able to come back and fix that timely, they can do a multi decade growth. And we believe that we have done that for the last 30 years and we’ll continue to do that over the next 30 years.
Amit Chandra
Okay. And in terms of the factors which are driving the ARPU growth, obviously one of the factors is providing more premium services, pricing hikes. And obviously we have also lowered the number of RFQs like per supplier or we have increased the quality of rfq. So how, how this change of strategy is actually being taken by the customers and is it that we are prioritizing more to our higher, higher paying suppliers to a larger extent, which is not in line with the strategy of improving our churn at the lower end. So how to, how to maintain that balance? So that is the question.
So obviously you answered that, but I.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Got it, I got it. So if you see we are, we are a two way marketplace. To go to our two way marketplace discovery platform. Okay, we are a two way marketplace. Okay? One way marketplace where the buyers come and discover the suppliers. You are right. Always the customers who pay higher, they are on the top. Okay? So the traditional way of the marketplace is the higher you pay, the higher share of the buyer visibility you get. However, there’s the other side of the marketplace which is the supplier led RFQ Consumption marketplace. That’s the equal opportunity marketplace by in terms of the the quality of the inquiries because you the same quality of the inquiries are available to you as a silver customer or you as a platinum customer.
At the same time there is no differentiation there. It’s the only differentiation is in the number of by list that you can access as a silver customer or as a platinum customer. So half of the marketplaces equal opportunity marketplace, half of the marketplace is equal opportunity. Now in fact some of the silver customer which are self users where the proprietor himself is using the platform we find that many times he is at a more advantageous situation because he himself handles all the inquiries and he has the mobile app and he gets the immediate notification he is able to compete better with the some of the larger supplier.
However some of the larger suppliers actually have two, three dedicated resources working on India Mart and sometimes they have auto refresher where somebody keep looking at the screen to make sure that no important buyer is missed from their side. So from our side we don’t differentiate. It is the supplier’s ability and supplier’s trust into the platform that he himself puts more effort or more money to whether deal it equally by himself or equally by deploying more permanent resource to handle India market inquiry. We don’t differentiate. We only differentiate based upon the buyer side marketplace or seller side marketplace.
Amit Chandra
Okay sir, thank you.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
So thank you.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Sorry.
Avijit Vikram
So we have a question from the chat box. The question is from Mr. Ankur Pan. Have we taken any pricing actions in quarter four?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
So on the silver side we haven’t taken any action. In fact if you really see our silver pricing from 2019 only time it went down was during the 2021 Covid time and then it went back to the same price. On the gold and platinum we continue to take about 10 odd percentage hike every year or so and which is the normal thing that we typically do in the month of January or so and that similar hikes are and the hikes that happen are no longer applied on the same day because some of the renewals have already been sent, some of the proposals have already been sent.
So it takes care of as and when somebody’s renewal will come and add in when new sales will happen. So these are the slower injection of prices price hikes that we do about 1010 odd percent every year that continues to happen.
operator
Thank you sir. Next question is from the line of Abhishek Banerjee from ICSA Securities. Hi Abhishek, please go ahead with your question.
Abhishek Banerjee
Foreign. Thanks for the Opportunity if we look at another traffic number. Right. So from FY22 onwards till now we would see a roughly 1% CAGR in terms of traffic growth. Right. And if you kind of try to correlate that with the number of, you know, I mean when you are paying supplier numbers also kind of started reducing the gross numbers that is from FY23. Right. So is it kind of time that we start advertising a little more, you know, to get the traffic higher and probably that can you know, lead to some a positive five years somewhere.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, so we are, we are aligned on that side. The only thing is that in the first root cause analysis we found certain things to be fixed and which we found that they are anyway needs to be fixed which we have tried to fix. As I said this particular quarter we are doing multiple experiments and pilots on the online advertising as well as on the video side of the advertising, on affiliate advertising. And so this particular quarter I don’t think there is going to be a significant impact of either on the financials on the bottom line side or on the top line side.
If there is there are any of those experiments found unit economics positive and worthy of scaling up then we will come back to you and tell you about scaling up.
Abhishek Banerjee
So, so any, I mean given we are at all time high margins, what kind of, you know would, I mean what, what, how many basis points of revenues would you be, you know, willing to invest into advertising?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Come again Abhishek, please. Sorry.
Abhishek Banerjee
So, so I mean what would be the quantum of advertising that you could roughly look at?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I mean depends. I think last time because we are very new to advertising again I mean last time we did was 2016 and this is now 2025. So I think it’s been nine years since we have advertised and that time we used to spend about 40 odd crores on an annual budget about 15 crores into three, three times things have changed dramatically but I don’t think they would have changed so dramatically that we will end up spending 300 odd crores or something. I think that 40 odd crores would have become maybe 80 odd crores or 60 something like that.
Beyond that I don’t have any idea as of now. So even if you take anywhere between 5060 odd crores to 1900 odd crores it should on an annual basis should be around 5 basis point.
Abhishek Banerjee
Got it. Again just you know, interview on this one. So when you were last advertising say in FY16, you know it was a very different world. Now you are talking about performance, marketing and you know, do we have the kind of team in place that can really, you know, deliver on, on these new digital platforms? Right. So. So any thoughts on that? So are you interesting there?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
That is why I’m saying we are doing pilots. So there are, there are teams being aligned, new people being hired, existing people being trained for this new thing. You know, we never had teams for mobile, but we developed teams for mobile. We never had teams for artificial intelligence, but we developed teams for artificial intelligence. We never had teams for accounting, we developed teams for accounting. So we develop and align resources as and when things are required.
Abhishek Banerjee
Understood. So now if I just look at the last line on the slide, which is the employee cowboy. So even this year we have grown employee count by almost 13. While I understand some of it will be, you know, to support these new initiatives, but I’m sure the bulk of it is still for, you know, servicing clients. Right now given that, you know, the number of times has not really gone up are we you know, at some sort of, you know. So what is the outlook?
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I mean this is only shifting of the outsourced sales cost to the unroll movement which started last year, jfm, which was to be concluded this particular year in a few, every quarter all of it has been concluded. And I think now we will be returning back to the like to like numbers.
Abhishek Banerjee
So.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
If there was any, if you really add employee cost plus outsourced sales cost. Actually we are zero impact on cost in the last entire one year. So while this number looks like 13% up, there’s a zero impact on cost. Manpower cost plus outsourced sale cost put together remains same as last year.
Abhishek Banerjee
Understood. But what is the outlook, you know, going ahead? Do you think we can, you know, manage this at a mid single digit kind of a cable for the next one, one or two years at least we have you know, requisite visibility of revenue.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
No, I think because this one full year, I think we have had almost zero expenses growth. Next year within six months or so I think expense will start to increase and even number of people will start to increase because as we crack the product market fit, we will go back to growth mode and then we will need product people again. So people thing is we are so small a company that people think cannot be, cannot be filled all the time. You know, we go in expansion and consolidation kind of a mode. In FY22, if you see FY22, 23, we suddenly grew from 2700 employees to 4700 employees.
So I guess this is the nature of our business we are such a small company, we can’t manage yet the growth and consolidation together. So we continue to focus on growth and then consolidate and then focus on growth and then consolidate until we become large enough to do both at the same time.
Abhishek Banerjee
So when you were, you know, guiding for 35% odd margins, you are kind of building this also in.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Yeah, that’s why, that’s why I said the long term sustainable margins are 33 to 35%. And since these EBITDA margins are quite a bit of, you know, depends on revenue growth and collection growth and seasonality of the. And that is why even I have to look at the leading indicators. I look at the collection and cash from operation and margin of the cash from operation. So if you go to cash from operation margin slide, there is a graph cash from operation margin slide. So if you look at this slide, this will give you much more, much more stable way of this 37, 38% margin.
This is the leading indicator and that that will remain. Now we can take somebody else question.
Abhishek Banerjee
Sure, sure. Thanks.
Avijit Vikram
Okay, so I have a question from the chat box. Hi, the question is from Mr. Pratik Kothari. Have we already taken major part of the actions to bring down Churn and we will wait and watch on how does it play out or more is left to be done on that.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
I think 60% or 66% of what we have found till date to be changed has been done and about 33% is still work in progress. Having said that, as we work deeper into it we find more to do actions. So I think by the time we are 80% or so, I think we will discover another 20% to be to do so. It’s never work fully complete but currently we feel that we are somewhere around 60% complete. We still have at least some three, four months of work when we can say that now we are 80, 20.
Okay, thank you.
operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dinesh Agrawal for closing comments. Over to you sir.
Dinesh Chandra Agarwal
Thank you everybody for listening patiently to us and I really admire that you guys are trying to understand our business model and complicated our business model. Hopefully we will come back with the flying color soon in case you have any queries or comments that are left. You can always reach out to our investor relationship team and thank you and have a good day and a good weekend.
operator
Thank you everyone. On behalf of India Mart, we now conclude this webinar. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.