Protean eGov Technologies Ltd (BSE: 544021) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 07, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Pushpa Mani — Vice President, Head Investor Relations
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
Rohan M — Analyst
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Vineet Tejwani — Analyst
Siddhartha Prakash — Analyst
Kunal Bhatia — Analyst
Prem Lunia — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
IT. SA sa. Ladies and gentlemen, you have joined the protein eGov Technologies Limited conference call. Please stay connected, the call will begin shortly. I repeat, you have joined the Protein EGOV Technologies earnings conference call. Please stay connected, the call will begin shortly. Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to protein EGov Technologies Limited Q1 FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Goindia Advisors. 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 then zero on your Touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpamani, Vice President and Head of Investor Relations from Protein. Thank you. And over to you Ms.
Pushpamani.
Pushpa Mani — Vice President, Head Investor Relations
Thanks Amsha. Good afternoon everyone. I welcome you all to the quarter one FY26 results discussion. You must have received the results and the investor presentation of our company which is available on BSC and NSC as well as on the company’s website. As usual we will start the forum with the opening remarks by our Managing Director followed by CFO and then we will open the floor for the question and answer session. If any of our questions remain unanswered, you may reach out to us afterwards. The management on today’s call would be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director, Mr.
Sandeep Mantri, CFO and myself Ms. Pushpamani Herayar. Before we begin I would like to mention that some of the statements in today’s discussion may be forward looking in nature and we believe that the expectations contained in these statements are reasonable. However, these statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may lead to different results.
With this I invite our MD Mr. Suresh Sethi to address all of you. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Pushpa. Good afternoon everyone and many thanks for joining us today. I am pleased to share that Protean EGub Technologies Limited has started FY26 on a strong note. We have delivered resilient financial and operational performance in the first quarter. We continue to work closely with the government and the society in building inclusive, mission critical and citizen scale digital public infrastructure for the welfare of the citizens. Let me start with the overall financial overview for the quarter. I am pleased to report that our revenue from operations grew by 7% year on year to 211 crores.
Driven primarily by the strong performance of our central record keeping services business. For nps, APY and ups. We had continued gains in market share in our tax services business and there were strategic mandates that we received. During this quarter our EBITDA grew by 31% year on year to 45 crores, translating into EBITDA margin expansion by 240 to 84 basis points to 18.8%. Profit after tax also demonstrated healthy growth of 13% year on year to 24 crores resulting in a PAT margin of 10% in quarter one. FY26 our financial position remains robust with a strong balance sheet that provides us with significant flexibility to drive future growth as on 30th June 2025 we have over 800 crores in cash and cash equivalents and a net debt free status.
This gives us agility to invest strategically in opportunities that align with our growth objectives while maintaining a prudent approach to capital management. Coming to Key Business Highlights I’m delighted to share that Proteon continues to strengthen its position as a trusted DPI builder for the nation. We are pleased to share that a significant achievement for the quarter for us was an initiative by IRDA to create a unified digital marketplace for insurance in India. We secured a hundred crore mandate from Bima Soobham India Federation. This initiative will pave the foundation for a first of its kind insurance digital public infrastructure for the country.
We have received the mandate to develop, integrate and maintain the BIMA SOGAM platform. This win again builds on our legacy of delivering mission critical national platforms and significantly expands our footprint into the insurance domain. Protean issued a statement of intent with niti Aayog on 15 July 2025 to strengthen financial inclusion by promoting literacy and APY adoption. This again marks the beginning of a key strategic alignment to further strengthen pension penetration specifically among the marginalized sections of the Society. We’ll spearhead initiatives to educate shareholders, stakeholders and conduct targeted outreach programs in 64 aspirational districts. Tax services continued to perform well with a 2% year on year revenue growth.
We gained approximately 80 basis points in market share increasing from 58.2% in quarter 4 FY25 to 59% in Q1 FY26. During the quarter we issued 1 crore PAN cards with 54% issuances. Being paperless, we continue to build our leadership in the CRA business with a 16% year on year revenue growth in quarter one. Importantly, we added 32.4 lakh new subscribers capturing 98% share in new additions and also onboarded 753 corporates further expanding our reach. Our leadership position remains robust with a dominant 97% market share across NPS and APY, reinforcing our position as a trusted CRA partner.
In line with our proven ability to deliver at scale, we successfully developed and deployed the Unified Pension Scheme platform for the central government in record time. Launched on April 1, 2025, UPS offers an assured pension option under NPS and as the primary cra, we’ve been managing its end to end implementation. As of June 30, we’ve onboarded 19,000 accounts demonstrating our ability to deliver large scale projects efficiently and effectively. Our identity services segment saw robust growth across most products driven by increasing demand for digital identity solutions. However, revenue was impacted by SLAB based pricing and competitive pricing pressures at the foundational level.
Despite this, we are encouraged by the growing traction of our value added offerings such as E Sign Pro and Rise with Protean, which are well positioned to benefit from the next phase of digital India. These innovative solutions are designed to meet the evolving needs of our customers. We are also pleased to report that our RFP led business pipeline is gaining significant traction with our current order book exceeding 300 crore. This order book constitutes of CYC, CRR 2.0, BIMA, SUGAM and other mandates in ID services and other businesses. We are also thrilled to have received industry recognition for our branding and communication initiatives, winning two awards at the ET Brand Disruption Awards 2025.
These accolades position us as a leader in the DPI space reflecting our commitment to excellence in branding and communication. In conclusion, I’d like to state that Protean has a strong positioning across core citizen services and emerging digital public infrastructure. We continue to contribute strongly at a foundational level at the identity level across KYC and this combined with our robust balance sheet, strong cash position, growing RFP pipeline and strong execution capabilities position us well to drive future growth and create long term value for our stakeholders. I’d like to thank our team for their dedication and our investors for their continued support.
With this I would like to hand over to Sandeep Mantri, our CFO to share the financials with you.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you Suresh and good evening everyone. As I begin I would like to take a moment to highlight the broader trend shaping the digital infrastructure landscape in India. The government continued focus on digitization with Digital India initiative at Nibra Bharat and the rapid adoption of digital public infrastructure coupled with significant investment in emerging technologies is driving demand for mission critical digital services. This macro backdrop present a favorable environment for companies like Protean with expertise in delivering population scale, E governance project and building digital public infrastructure for India. I am pleased to Share that our quarter one performance aligned with this trend.
With growth across our key businesses, we have maintained healthy margin and delivered consistent profitability driven by the sustained growth in our strength in our CRA and tax business and initial contribution from our strategic win in new businesses. Let me now take you through the financial performance for Q1FY26. Revenue from operation stood at 211 crore which is an increase of 7% year on year compared to 197 crores in quarter one of FY25 which is last year. EBITDA for this quarter stood at 45 crore which is 31% growth from on a YUI basis and from 34 crore in quarter one of FY25 and up 30% QoQ from 34 crore in Q4FY25 EBITDA margin stood at 18.8% in quarter one FY26.
When we talk about profit after tax, profit after tax stood at 24 crore in Q1FY26 which is an increase of 13.1% on a YUI basis with PET margin of 10%. Moving to business performance, tax services revenue stood at 100 crore which is 2% growth on a YUI basis while we gained 80 basis point market share from 58.2% in Q4 of FY25 to 59% in Q1 of FY26. I would also like to highlight that on YUI basis the market share gain has been a whopping 5% from 54% in last year to 59% in this quarter. Around 1 crore pen card were issued during the quarter.
When we talk about CRI business, The revenue increased by 16% on a YoY basis from 66 crore in Quarter 1 FY25 to 76 crore in Quarter 1 FY26. As you know mentioned by Suresh, we added 32.4 lakh new subscriber during the quarter capturing more than 98% market share in the new subscriber and our cumulative market share is also equal, more or less equal to the same. When we talk about identity services we recorded revenue of 24 crores which is down 14% on a YoY basis and flat on a sequential basis. However, the number of transactions saw growth across most of the ID product.
The decline in revenue was primarily due to flip based pricing and pricing pressure to some extent. At the foundational level if we talk about new businesses the revenue is stood at 11 crore which is up from 6 crore in quarter one FY25 we have started booking revenue from Some of the key RFP we won in the last year. As mentioned by Suresh, a key development this quarter was our strategic 100 crore RFP mandate from Bima Sugam India Federation to build a first of its kind digital public infrastructure in the insurance sector. These RFP mandates are a significant milestone in our journey and our order book from such mandate stood at about 300 crores.
These RFP gives us healthy forward visibility and will begin contributing meaningfully to revenues in the coming quarter. Additionally, we have a healthy pipeline of these RFP of the RFPS in DPI space. From a financial position standpoint we are extremely strong. We have asset light business model with a strong cash flow and we have cash and cash equivalent of more than 800 crore as on 30 June 2025. We continue to operate with zero debt, no debt on our balance sheet which gives us the flexibility to invest in emerging opportunities while maintaining the financial stability. With that I conclude my remark and we would be happy to take your question.
Thank you very much. Over to.
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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. The first question is from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Kapadia Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
Thanks for the opportunity questions from my end. You know if I were to look at revenues, they are up 7% this Suresh is despite the low base of last year. And if I were to look at you know the last year base, the rest of the year also had, you know very muted revenue growth. So for you know FY26 can we expect this revenue momentum to you know continue and you know revenue growth some color. If you could give should be high double digit. It could be very high double digit. What kind of revenue growth looks possible for this year? And secondly employee expenses are up, you know 40% this quarter.
What is leading to this increase? Is it just the number addition for the employees? Is it annual hikes? You could give some insight that would be helpful. Those are my two questions.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
So Prakash, thank you for your question. Your first question on revenue, what kind of growth we are looking at for the year. You know so while we will not give guidance but we see a healthy, you know revenue growth in quarters to come because the reason I’ll tell you because RSP based revenue, which is the 300 crore, you know, order book which we won this year is yet to, you know, playing in the, you know, revenues. So that will deliver a significant growth to our revenue, you know, revenue book. And another thing is that even in CRA which is a more annuity based revenue, the subscriber base, if the subscriber base grows, the revenue, you know, start kicking in and it is a loyal revenue which will remain, you know, for a foreseeable future.
So we are in, I think we are, as far as revenue is concerned, we are pretty confident that we will deliver a good growth in this year for sure. And to answer your second question on employees, there are two, three reasons which is basically resulting in this employee expenses growth in employee expenses. One is the project based hiring which is basically for these RFP led businesses which is the revenue for those businesses are yet to kick in. But we have started hiring to deliver those projects and therefore there is some increase in revenue to some extent because of that.
Second thing is because of increment which we delivered in this quarter, therefore you will see some increase because of increment. And third is last year we started strengthening our leadership team and now we have a very robust, stable leadership team. And because last year it was partial, this year it will be, you know, full cost for some of those leaders. So these are the three primary reason for increase in employee expenses. Having said that, I think the level will remain more or less same except the RFE project based hiring which we continue to do so depending on, you know, winning various project as we are in, you know, various stages of discussion for many of the pipelines as we talked about.
I hope this answers your question.
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
Sure. Sandeep. Thanks Sandeep. I’ll join back if I have more questions. Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kamlesh Bagmar from Lotus Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Sir. One question on the part of your like reporting like if I see last year your presentation then you were like say the ebitda numbers were 35 watt crore or 45 watt crore and this time around it is 35 crore. I know that you have to for that ECL provisioning but if I adjust for that then your EBITDA without other income is down 37% year over year and your margins are 7.8% if I exclude the other income. And on the net cash side, this net cash or like a cash that has been there for the last three years.
So even three years back it was 800 odd crore. So entire of the EBITDA, the reported EBITDA based on your presentation is driven by the other income. But if I see net of other income, Your margins are 7.8% visa with 13.3% last year. No.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
So I think so. You know, you know I kind of agree with you that our margin are bit low, you know, you know, as compared to whatever we see. But if you see last year, if you, you know, remove. So basically it is not 13.3%. Ultimately whatever ECL provisioning we are doing is also part of business. And I would not exclude that when I’m computing ebitda. So more or less, I think our EBITDA remained in the range of between 7.5 to 8% for last year quarter and last quarter and also this quarter. So while we are putting lot of measures to bring the EBITDA bring a growth in the EBITDA percentage and that will start delivering the results maybe in one or two quarters.
There are many automation efforts which are going on in the company and you would see some sort of increase in EBITDA percentage going forward probably from Q3 or Q4.
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
I’m just referring to your presentation last year presentation. Your last year presentation clearly mentioned that adjusted EBITDA is 45 crore. And this quarter you are showing the same EBITDA at 35 crore. So there should be consistency on the report.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
So we will, we will be consistent with this approach. Now we will not be changing any, you know, any you know, calculation as far as EBITDA is concerned. I think this is the, this is the numbers calculations you are going to see going forward.
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
And lastly on the growth side.
operator
Sorry to interrupt sir, but I may request you.
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
Yeah, thank you.
operator
The question queue for follow up questions. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan M from Aquarius Securities. Go ahead.
Rohan M — Analyst
Good afternoon sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Just want to understand on the international business we had won a couple of projects earlier. So any further updates on the project when there and how should one look at the revenues in this year from the international business?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
So Rohan, we had indicated earlier that we had started executing an education DPI in Morocco. So we are doing part of the execution and the revenues which are accruing from that project are getting, you know, sort of accrued and they are showing in the numbers and they will continue to show in the next quarter. Also the second project for us was Ethiopia. Again the project is under implementation and revenue recognition will be coming through as Sandeep Mentioned just like domestic, some of the international businesses will also start reflecting the numbers in the coming quarter and onwards.
Other than that, we are at a stage where we have around three or four projects in which we have been shortlisted and are at the final stages. We should be able to give you more visibility on the same by next quarter.
Rohan M — Analyst
Sure. And in terms of the new business initiatives that we have and 300 crores of pipeline that is there. So what is the realistic revenue that we can book in FY26 and 27 out of these.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
So out of, you know, 300 crore pipeline which for a project turnkey project pipeline so new. I’m just sitting, you know, keeping aside the new businesses. I’m just talking about the, the order book which is pertaining to, you know, turnkey project out of 300 crore. I guess you know, about a third of that revenue should be booked in this which is current order book. If we win, you know, more orders in future then it will be, it will be, you know, added to the revenue pool.
Rohan M — Analyst
Sure. And thirdly, sir, on the processing charges, how should one look at it incrementally? Like Pan business clearly contributes a good amount of the processing charges. But with the new businesses coming in, what proportion of the processing charges will flow from new businesses? What kind of metric should we compare it with? Would it be fair to have a certain ratio of total revenues or only a certain businesses will have a contribution of contribution to processing charges? Some clarity around that it will be.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
You know, business to business. I would not. Maybe when you do modeling you can, you know, one on one talk with our IR team and they can, you know, give a better guidance. But it will be varying from business to business. But on an overall basis, you know, you should assume more or less, you know, about the same kind of processing, you know, direct expenses to revenue. It is about, you know, 37, 36% of my revenues. You should assume more or less same if you are doing a modeling on an overall basis. But if you are doing modeling for, you know, individual businesses then you should get in touch with.
Rohan M — Analyst
With the PAN 2.0 project allocated already the announcement is there in the media. Any further clarity we have on the role that Protean can play.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
I think we have stated enough in the past also and this is the clarity which we gave earlier remains. You know, we are where we were, you know, there earlier also. So I think it will be more or less same. We pain 2.0. We have talked a lot in past also. I, I think it is the same situation right now. We Are not
Rohan M — Analyst
on the distribution part. Of the reception leg of it. We are still awaiting further details.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
No, no Rohan, we are there. We continue to run the business. As we said earlier the mandate given by us to ITD remains as is. So no change. And the distribution business and today the issuance business as is continues to be run as is there is no change to it, right?
Rohan M — Analyst
Not in the current current thing but I was more asking from the point of view Once the pan 2.0 goes live, what happens then?
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
You know as we said earlier also it will depend lot on citizens behavior and the distribute how distribution plays in. So as of now that is the visibility we had in past we have the same visibility. Having said that we, you know as we stated we are building in lot of DPI related, you know project which can be you know far bigger than you know many other DPIs. So I think we are, we are looking more on a forward basis and you know focusing more on you know businesses which can lead us to next next level.
Rohan M — Analyst
Sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubham from Simple. Please go ahead.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Hello, I’m audible.
operator
Yes sir.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Yeah, my first question was so the order we received for Bima, Sugam and Source and the whole order book that we have. So these kind of mandates, when will they start commercializing and have we already booked some revenue in this quarter? Will we start booking the revenue in this financial year? And what kind of margins can we expect from these mandates? Will these, will the margins be like high single digit mid teens? What kind of margins can you see there? And similarly what are the other areas or the mandates that we are actively pursuing right now to drive growth? That is my first question.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Okay, so to answer your question in this quarter there is no, I mean no significant revenue from these large project. I you know, I think from Q2 and fully from Q3 onward we should start booking revenues in this, in this project and therefore you will see uptick in revenue on account of that to answer your question on margin, I think these are you know government project and margin will be you know, mid teen type. Mid teen digit, you know, which is what we are expecting.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
And to your last question Shubham, naturally we continue to look out and participate in large scale DPI projects as I mentioned earlier. So core focus naturally has been at the foundational level. So anything to do with identity which is where we are seeing the play we have today with Sarsai because which effectively is the central KYC pool for all the four BFSI regulators. So it’s a very foundational construct and a foundational stack that we are working on. Bima Sogam is a big foray into the financial, into the insurance industry again in the BFSI aspect. Other than that we are naturally doing work and looking at allied work in the space of data sharing, which is whether it is the business we run as a B2B business under account aggregator or some of the work we have done while building the agri DPI for the government of India where we build the entire consent and the data sharing framework and architecture.
So these are areas we continue to remain focused on and looking forward to future growth.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Okay, okay, got it. My next question was that historically we used to earn operational margins around like around 20% and if we see like year on year gradually since FY18 it has just been decreasing and like it has dropped to almost 8 to 10%. So my question was that what has changed in the last five to 10 years that our margins have significantly dropped? Is it just mainly because we are not able to achieve scale and revenue growth or are there other factors as well that has, you know, eroded our margins over these years?
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
So you know, I think Shubham, the margin story is basically we are building, as you are aware, we are building lot of new products and there is a lot of investment which is going into these new products. And that is one of the primary reason because the revenue is yet to kick in and we have spent good amount in developing some of those IPs. Once the revenue start kicking in then you will the margin also start, you know, improving.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Okay, but like so apart from let’s say our identity services business where we are, you know, placing pricing pressures other businesses also. Is it like in the last five, 10 years.
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
So pricing pressure, we are in a competitive industry so pricing pressure is going to remain. Having said that that may be one.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Of the, I mean to ask for our other businesses also in 5 to 10 years is it like the price like realizations have gone down or you know like some pricing pressure has been there?
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
I, I don’t think you know the primary reason is because we are putting lot of these new initiative or new project and new products products and we are putting lot of technology expenses in those products. So therefore for some, you know, for a short run you will see some, you know, contraction in margin. But you know, on a long term basis once the revenues from even, you know, couple of these products start kicking in, you will see, you know, immediate uptick in margins.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
I will also further add to it that when you look at the product lines that we’ve chosen, which are very closely, you know, working on the app layer above the DPIs, so which is basically providing consumer and corporate enterprise solutions for consumption of various governance services. Most of these, including in the ID space, are going to be very. So they will have an annuity component to it and they’ll be recurring revenues and they are not like turnkey projects. So if you see the company is like working on two fronts. On one side we will keep looking for large scale national projects which will come under RFPs where you will have turnkey revenues coming in.
And the other side is building the strong muscle of creating product based solutions which are equally important because one leads to the other. As you get capability and competence in building the national infrastructure, your ability to then expose APIs and build solutions on top is further strengthened. And that is where we are investing in technology and people. And as Sandeep rightly said, it’s more ahead of the curve investment which will lead to very well defined SaaS based revenues for the company going forward.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Okay, just a follow up on this if I can ask. Yeah, yeah, so as you mentioned, you know, like we have been investing, so yeah, we have been also making a lot of investments in the open digital ecosystem that we have been building. So I just wanted to ask. So like, I think like maybe like a year or two ago we were, you know, very optimistic about ONDC itself. But then after that we have, you know, like more new when the fees will start on ondc and we would get additional revenue or let’s say recurring revenue from there as well.
So how confident you are that, you know, in all of these different open general ecosystems where we are putting forward. Investments like in the next three or. Five years, like can it become a significant part of our revenue stream? Like how confident you are of that? Like what is our thought process around it?
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, I, I think, I think Rohan, if we put 10 products on the block, not all the products will, you know, will go on the same path. But we are very confident, and we were saying this again and again, that our new businesses, you know, out of which product you know, will deliver what as of now, it is very premature to say, but we again, we are reiterating that our new businesses will contribute at least 25 to 30% in next three years timeline. We, you know, we, we are committed to that.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Yeah, so I meant to ask about only the digital ecosystems because those have not really been started monetizing like apart from the fees fee that we get, you know, like the platform Fee or the main monetization part has not started for. So I was asking that like what do you think about that?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
I think if you look at it, we’ll have to take both a macro and a micro view over here. Initiatives like ONDC are national initiatives. We’ve seen the success of UPI as a payments DPI for the country and it has its own cycle. So I’m not comparing cycles also. But at times you might find that, you know, the growth to create a national adoption and consumer behavior change will take some time. But we do still believe that whatever journey India is taking in business, building strong DPIs across multiple sectors will have significant opportunity of unlocking the digital economy.
And today we clearly know that our digital economy is growing at twice the rate of our regular economy. So these are large bets. Wherever we are working on a turnkey basis, yes, we are getting, you know, the turnkey RFP revenues kicking in as we deploy the solutions. But when you look at adoption, adoption and actual, you know, use of these digital rails by enterprise and consumers, that is something on which the ecosystem will have to play and that that is a slightly longer term game. Whereas you rightly said it will be, you know, a line, a timeline of two to three years where you see these scaling up.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Okay, thanks a lot for the in depth answer. I wish you the best. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vineet from Share Giant. Please go ahead.
Vineet Tejwani — Analyst
Thank you sir for giving me an opportunity to ask the question. First of all I would like to congratulate the management for, for delivering a very steady and a strong set of performance in a challenging environment. And in this regards I would like to ask you a question like my first question is that you have won some RFPs like Milestone RFPs like CKYC 2.0 and Bima Sug, which seems to me to be a very like path breaking kind of step. So if you can elaborate the kind of potential these initiatives can bring to the company maybe five year time, 10 years down the line because these are new areas of growth that would be very good for me if you can give some light on this.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Vineet, Vineet, as I earlier said that these are again very foundational DPIs that have been built for the country. CKYC clearly is a big intervention which was done a few years back by the four regulators coming together and the intent at this stage is to revamp the entire tech stack for creating a much more seamless central KYC database and the best of technology in terms of you Know, data matching, data duplication, face authentication and other areas is being put in place which will create a very, very huge economy for the entire economy and efficiency for the entire BFSI sector.
So we see this very foundational. It’s a turnkey project for us at this stage where we are revamping, designing and putting across the new stack. But it will unlock a lot of value because you will be seeing that the way financial institutions do KYC and onboard customers. This will give it a significant uptick and that is another area we will see as an allied and related areas in which we can then build enterprise solutions to leverage the central KYC stack. Bimasugam clearly is, I think the first large scale foray into building a digital public infrastructure to support support the entire insurance industry right from insurers, insured and the entire ecosystem coming together on one strong digital race.
And we know there are multiple, you know, insurance products which are out there. So creating that transparency, bringing the entire ability to put it together, digitization of policies and the ability to link the entire insurance DPI into an open network where you are also supported by other foundational DPIs of identity of health because all these will become input parameters into an open network to provide better and more customized and personalized insurance. So ultimately the consumer will be a huge winner based on that. So again, once these rails are in place, we will naturally see a plethora of enterprise products and services coming into play which will leverage the central stack to be able to provide a better insurance experience and better insurance, you know, insurance computation in terms of whatever premiums we are paying, they will be far more personalized and customized going forward.
So we see huge opportunity at an ecosystem level. So these are not products or stacks that are created just as an rfp, but they actually unlock an entire ecosystem and that is where we are wanting to play in both the infrastructure level and the app level for the country.
Vineet Tejwani — Analyst
Thanks for the clarity. Just an add on question on this. So if you can help me also to understand the kind of the pipeline which is there in the RFP stage and how well protein is placed to capture that set where we are very strongly placed and we are confident and what stage of those RFP we are at either bidding stage or we have already won. So if you can give this color to that, it will be very useful for us to map it out. Thank you sir.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Vinit, if we have an RFP in hand we would be able to confirm to you. But anything which we are bidding for or in the stage difficult to you know put that in of front information out there. But as we’ve earlier said focus for us is always in the space of foundational DPIs. So domestically when we look at it we are focused on any identity related RFPs, anything to do with taxation, Social Security. These are areas we are going after today. A lot of work which is happening in the digital space whether it is in terms of EKYC E sign which is primarily the stack which gets built on the foundational identity stack and enables payments and transfers.
So there are multiple state level RFPs which come into it. So we are actively participating in all of these and that is where we are talking about the fact that overall we have almost 300 crores order book as Sandeep earlier mentioned and that is really where we are seeing the trajectory globally. Spuc we have been very consistent in maintaining that our focus from a geographic perspective today is in Africa, Southeast Asia and Middle East. These are countries which are looking at identity, Social Security and taxation related, you know infrastructure getting to created over there and that is what we are bidding for.
So that that in a construct is the RFP scenario for us and we are actively participating in multiple RFPs as of as we speak.
Vineet Tejwani — Analyst
Okay, thank you sir. That’s all from you my side. Thank you.
operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. In order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in this conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Siddhartha Prakash from Evanderspark. Please go ahead.
Siddhartha Prakash — Analyst
Yeah, hello. So thanks for the chance. I just want to ask one question. With the PAN 2.0 project consolidating all PAN and PAN services into a single unified platform managed by LTI mindtree. What is the anticipated impact on Protean’s existing revenue streams and long term role as an intermediary?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
So as I’ve earlier mentioned, this new project is primarily looking at the Tech stack which is currently run by the IT department for issuance of the PAN number after they do the de duplication of data data within the database. And therefore this is different from the mandate we currently run which is for largely collating the citizen information, doing the KYC and securely sharing the data with it. And subsequently once the PAN number is issuing issued then we go ahead and do the issuance of the card and delivering it to the citizens. While we see our the process flow us providing the capabilities of collation of data processing and issuance.
The tech stack is where today it works and that is what has been mandated out under this span 2.0 RFP as far as impact is concerned, we don’t see any immediate impact because this RFP clearly talks about two years plus of deployment timeline. The other question which clearly comes is that what mode or mechanism that the citizens be choosing going forward while applying for an identity like pan? And that is where we see that today 70% of the citizens in the country go through an assisted mode of application which is where our nationwide network of 400,000 agents comes into play.
And clearly taking a sort of view going forward, the assisted behavior is very, very sort of dominant in our ecosystem. We see it being played out even in the other DPIs we are building because end of the day the attempt is that no citizen should be left behind. So while you provide them direct to service portals, you also make sure that the people living in rural India, people who are not that digitally savvy, are equally able to access the digital platforms and the digital rails of the nation. So it’s a difficult one to predict that two years down the line how will the citizen be consuming services of identity issuance and application? So that is where we are currently.
So no immediate impact to our business.
Siddhartha Prakash — Analyst
Okay, yeah, thanks for that. Just one more question. What’s the plan to offset tax services volatility? Are pension or identity services scalable to become major contributors here?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Absolutely, because see one is when you look at the DPI space. So I will take a couple of approaches to this which we are doing. One is we continue to remain focused on DPI based businesses and these are most of the times central and state government project led turnkey businesses. And as you know that we are providing naturally when I look at the central record keeping agency business we run with a dominant market share of 97%. That is in effect the you know, the Social Security DPI and pension penetration being at a mere 6% in the country, there’s a significant headroom over there to continue to grow it.
The pension regulator is clearly very committed to expanding this penetration. If we look at the weaker section pension product which is the atal pension Yojana we are talking about in our country, around 8 crores plus subscribers. Whereas the number of people having Jandhan accounts which are again very relevant for the weaker section of the society stand at almost 55 crores plus. So we see significant headrooms in the pension space with the government putting lot of thrust by launching programs like NPS Vatsalya which is for miners, pension for miners which is launching programs like UPS which is assured pension, you know, sort of design product Design for the central government employees.
So there’s a huge upside side over there. Other areas like Bimasogum and all open a completely new sort of part of the economy to us. Like the insurance sector. Identity continues to grow very strongly in the country because as we are saying that all these DPIs and rails coming together are unlocking immense value for people to consume these services digitally. So identity becomes a core factor. When you are talking at doing KYC in any, you know, sort of with any regulated entity you are looking at things like digital signing which means you are removing paper based documents out of the ecosystem.
So these are again core foundational products that we are offering. And more importantly as we offer these products, again I would reiterate, we are also building the app layer. So we are today not for example a certified entity for providing E sign authentication based on Aadhaar. We are also building applications where we are building end to end digitization workflow suites for companies which we can offer to enterprises for providing them efficiency in paper management and workflow within the organization. So these are very allied areas. But definitely it’s a growing space and clearly getting unlocked in more and more different sectors as we go forward.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
And you know, further to add to Suresh, we are expanding all these DPI to international market as well which will also, you know, give some sort of mitigation to the, you know, revenue risk which may arise on because of online behavior.
Siddhartha Prakash — Analyst
Okay, thank you. Thank you sir. All the best going forward.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Bhatia from Dalal and Brocha Stockbroking Ltd. Please go ahead.
Kunal Bhatia — Analyst
Yes sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I just had a question on the bank services business. So this time around on a y o y basis we have gained 500 basis point market share. There is a 2% growth in there. But if you, if we look at in terms of volume, the volume has remained almost the Same which was 1 crore last year. Even this year we have, we are at the same bank. So a, what was the reason of this 2% rise? Was it a better realization? And secondly, how do we see this trajectory going forward now that we have a higher market share?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
So there are two parts to it. One, see the growth clearly comes because as I mentioned, you know, distribution plays a very strong role and secondly, the journeys that you are providing both at the agent level and at the direct level. So for example, if an agent today is enabling a pan application journey, we have today also created product provisions where the agents can actually enter into a Completely paperless journey. So you’re able to create an assisted digital journey. So all these investments into technology, into creating a very secure pipe for submission of data to the IT department and, you know, creating a better agent experience once creates, you know, better and sharper distribution out there.
And other than that, naturally we look at, from a distribution perspective, getting the maximum reach and therefore working towards increasing our market share in this space. As I earlier mentioned, 70% of applications still are coming in the assisted mode, but still the 30% which get catered to on online channels. Again, we are taking measures to ensure that our online journeys don’t get dropped. We are able to give the right nudges and information to the person looking for a Pan Card issuance to be able to complete the journey. So these are some of the investments which go more from a technology and agent enablement perspective.
And that is how we see the growth in market share coming for us. And goes without saying, you know, the trust that the company’s name carries as a provider for the name last 22 decades plus is itself a strong endorsement for us to be taken as a preferred partner. In terms of overall numbers on one front, clearly, as we’ve been saying and if you look at the Aadhaar Pan linkage data, Pan penetration in the country is still there, about 40%. And we do see continued use, you know, Pan application and issuance. And as we’ve been earlier maintaining that PAN clearly is being used for more and more purposes today.
The PAN as an identity, whether it is government schemes, some of them have mandated that the person should have a PAN card. Your bank account opening with the PMLA guidelines is now a mandatory requirement to have a PAN card or submit a form 6061. So pan usage is increasing. PAM usage at, you know, both tier 1, tier 2 and then 3, 4 and 5 is increasing because of things like DBT. And therefore this will continue to be a consistent, you know, requirement year on year. And what we are generally seeing that there is a normal around 6 to 7 crore PAM cards issuance, new Pan card issuance every year.
There have been years where the numbers have spiked due to certain events like the Aadhaar Pan linkage and the deadline that was provided. Similarly, if there is, you know, incremental government schemes getting issued and people in bulk go for Pan card issuance to be able to, you know, subscribe to them. So there are events which at times have spiked it. But on the average this is the number which is there. And for us it’s important that one we Have a continual development stream of new issuances happening and second is to improve our market share which we are focused on.
Kunal Bhatia — Analyst
Okay and sir, basically in this quarter in specific the volume is the same but despite that a 2% growth what is the reason for that?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
So you know this tech services business is consisting of some allied services as well which is tiny services. So there is some increase in the tin transactions and that has resulted into 2% growth. While you are right that number of PAN ISS is more or less same. So how come you know 2.2% increase in revenue but this is because of the allied services we provide beneath you know tech services.
Kunal Bhatia — Analyst
Okay, okay. And
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
which is a. Is not a significant portion but a small portion.
Kunal Bhatia — Analyst
And in terms of just if you could give us some sense on how has the e SignPro business gaining traction how have we seen the ramp up say on a month on month or a QOQ basis and where do you see this run rate ending in the current year?
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
I think there should be healthy contribution from the business this year definitely because as we speak we have a pretty deep pipeline where we have. And it’s not just the pipeline when I look at the funnel we have secured mandates and as I mentioned earlier it’s a SaaS business. So once the revenues start kicking it will be you know running on a SaaS basis. And the timeline which is taking clearly we have not shown very you know sort of big numbers or large numbers in the first quarter. There’s an integration timeline but we definitely see these upticks coming in the second quarter and onwards from there.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prem Lunia from Astute Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Prem Lunia — Analyst
Hello. Yes, thanks for taking my call. So sir, I had a question about the new businesses growth as we have been talking about few businesses like the ONDC business or the agristack business in the past but seems like they have not turned out as we thought of. I just wanted to understand that this view of having 25 to 30% of the business coming from the new businesses which would be the major things which you see as of now who can contribute to let’s say become a 50 crore or 100 crore business because that is the scale they’ll have have to reach to contribute around 2530 crore to the overall top line.
And also sir this is on the background of that we have grown our employee expense from around 75 crore to now around run date of from this quarter’s if we take around they took around 200 crores plus so how is this contributing to the top line is the view to understand.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
I think there are two aspects to it if I look at new business and the diversification that we are seeking. So as I said, one focus has clearly been to continue to strengthen from a public, digital public infrastructure contribution perspective. And we are clearly keeping our sights on large national projects and we’ve seen, you know, that is where we talked about them. And I’ll just repeat very quickly, whether it’s CKYC or insurance DPI or further strengthening of the pension DPI by schemes like UPS and all. So that one focus remains and that is, you know, for us looking at multiple 8 and central level DPIs, some of the turnkey projects which we have also carried out in sectors outside BFSI is projects like the AgriStack.
Now these have all been turnkey projects. What we are parallelly building as a business line outside the turnkey project adjacencies and the digital unlock which happens because as you build a digital public infrastructure and you build the ability for information sharing digitally to provide or consume services, you need to build applications which could be enterprise applications for enabling B2B journeys or it could be a B2B2C journey where consumers use applications to share data and then receive services, be it a loan, an advisory, health, you know, insurance, so on and so forth. So that is where we are in investing on the other side and building our entire data and analytics stack.
And along with the products like Esign Pro API rise which we are talking about in API Marketplace, these are areas which we are investing in the app space. So these are for us the two streams of business. One is clearly project led RFP business which is turnkey and and definitely requires investment in people for building on these projects. And as Sandeep mentioned, some of the numbers as we see this quarter also is coming from these teams which are getting created to service the large scale RFPs. The other side is an ongoing product capability where we are again we extended our technical and product and domain specialist teams to build technology in the spaces that we are choosing which are allied with the digital public infrastructure we are building.
So that is where the investment is going on the other side.
Prem Lunia — Analyst
Sure sir. So just to follow up on the product businesses like Proteinwise and Pro, can you see like in next one or two years these can contribute around 50 hundred crores can do they have that opportunity and do you think that adoption will happen on the customer side?
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
So I will not put a number per se, but the opportunity size is very large. As far as the G Sign Pro type of product is concerned, the opportunity size is like running into billions of dollars. I guess we are at a very strong position and you know, in next three years we should see strong revenues coming out of couple of these products.
Prem Lunia — Analyst
Sure, sir. And will it be margin accretive for that or will it be largely on the same line?
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
No, no, of course these, these are product or SaaS businesses which will definitely, you know, be margin accretive to the company.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Subangal Pugalia from Rare Enterprise. Please go ahead.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Hi. Thank you. I have a follow up on the previous question. How many customers do we have for. Esign Pro and guys with Protean and. If you can share some trends, recent trends on client additions. Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
You know, number of customer keep growing every now and then. I don’t think it will be appropriate for now because the product is still at initial stage. Maybe when if you want specific details on number of customer in each segment we could, you know, get on a 101 and we can provide you some details which we can provide publicly, you. Know. Under SEBI guidelines.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Sure. But.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
I can say that the pipeline is, pipeline is growing. We have a healthy pipeline of customers and the pipeline is growing with each passing day. So you know, we should see very good revenue or strong revenue coming out of these products in time to come.
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Due to time constraints, this would be our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
So thank you very much again for all the support and the questions which also help us to think through our strategy and become more and more clear about it. We are happy with the stage we are at currently and we clearly see a good trajectory for the company both on the project led businesses and the product led businesses and looking forward to keeping engaged with this community. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you on behalf of Goindia Advisors. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.