Protean eGov Technologies Ltd (BSE: 544021) Q3 2025 Earnings Call dated Jan. 31, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Pushpa Mani — Investor Relations
Suresh Kumar Sethi — Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer
Sandeep Mantri l — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Rohan Mandora — Analyst
Sandeep Jain — Analyst
Dhruv Shah — Analyst
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Darshil Jhaveri — Analyst
Shubham Sehgal — Analyst
Aman VIJ — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
SA SA Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Protein e Governance Technologies Limited Q3FY25 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 the conference call, please signal the operator by pressing the Star to than zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
Pushpa Mani — Investor Relations
I now hand the conference over to Ms. Uspamani Investor Edition. Thank you and over to you. Thanks Steve Good afternoon everyone. I wish you all a very happy New Year and welcome you all to the quarter three and nine months FY25 results discussion.
You must have received the results and investor presentation of the company which is available on BSC as well as on the company’s website. As usual we will start the forum with the opening remarks by our senior leadership team and then we will open the floor for Q and A. If. If you have any queries unanswered during the call, you may reach out to us afterwards. The management on today’s call would be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director Mr. Jayesh Soule, Whole Time Director and COO Mr. Sandeep Mantri, Chief Financial Officer and myself Ms. PushpaMani, Investor Relations. Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements in today’s discussion may may be forward looking in nature. 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 Kirti to give opening remarks. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Suresh Kumar Sethi — Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Good evening everyone. First of all, I think this is our first interaction during this year. So very happy New Year and thanks for joining the Quarter 3 FY25 earnings call for Protean. Let me start with the overall performance. During this quarter our revenues from operations stood at 202 crores.
Let me dive into the businesses or the business verticals. Tax services business witnessed a growth of 3% year on year and this was primarily driven by substantial increase in the market share. Protean’s share market share increased from 52.1% in Quarter 3 FY24 to 59.2% in Quarter 3 FY25.
We have seen that during the course of this year the overall Pan market has dipped by over 22%. We could achieve a 3% year on year growth primarily due to acquisition of larger market share. The last year numbers were high. As far as new Pan issuances were concerned, they were largely driven by certain trigger elements.
One was the Aadhaar Pan linkage deadline and there were certain broad based government schemes which were launched during the course of the year which kept the numbers high. During the water, protean issued around 1 crore PAN cards with online Pan issuances. Again for us continuing to grow. 52% of our issuances were online and this positive trend definitely bodes well for the business because it’s more margin accretive and cost efficient.
Overall as far as the Pan business is concerned, we see significant headroom over there as we always maintain being a business where Pan card penetration in the country is below 35%. Coming to pension services, we delivered yet another strong quarter with a growth of 12% year on year. During the year almost. 3.05 million new subscribers were onboarded and at the same time 600 corporates became part of the NPS ecosystem. We continue to maintain a dominant position with a 97% aggregate market share across NPS and APY. NPS Vatsalya, the pension scheme for miners, continues to gain popularity. We opened more than 32,000 accounts during this quarter. We clearly again recognize the need for a greater pension coverage, especially considering India’s rapidly aging population and increased life expectancy. There is serious thrust by the regulator to make sure that there is greater pension penetration in the country which today stands at somewhere around 6% and compares significantly lower with larger developed countries which are somewhere in the range of 70%. With increased per capita income, the financial ability to adapt to pension continues to increase and products like NPS Path Sellya now allow it to become a life cycle product where you can join right from infancy up to 70 years. In terms of identity services we witnessed a degrowth. This was a degrowth of around 17% year on year, but was again largely attributable to high volumes in the previous year. Driven by events like Aadhaar Pan Linkage and some broad based government schemes and aligning with our strategic emphasis on vertical integration, we are today delivering value added solutions like Esign Pro and Rise with Protean. These services are part of our data stack vertical and are getting developed on top of our core identity services and these in a sense enable us to strengthen our B2B engagement and unlock new business opportunities. Most of these products, whether it is E Sign or whether it is the API Marketplace, our annuity products, they deliver consistent transactional volumes and we have seen early adoption of the same and expect this trend to grow as we go across the next few quarters. In line with our mission towards accelerating digital India growth, we had a few breakout engagements this year. One innovation was a breakout category in the OTT space where we partnered with Prasad Bharati, which is India’s state owned public broadcaster who have recently forwarded into the OTT space. With the launch of the Waves app and taking a very differentiated approach, WAVES. Not only brings the best of India’s entertainment and culture, it allows you to shop while you stream. And this revolutionary shopping experience was powered by Protean with an ONDC enabled E commerce experience. The second important project I’d like to call out during the course of this quarter we won the prestigious C KYC Records Registry 2.0 mandate from SARSAY. As you’re all aware, in 2016 the Central KYC Records Registry was an ambitious initiative backed by all the four financial services regulators, rbi, sebi, ERDA and pfrda. It aimed to revolutionize customer onboarding by creating a centralized database to streamline compliance and efficiency across financial institutions. Today this database has over 94 crore KYC records. This particular mandate that we’ve secured from Sarsai, a Government of India undertaking, is to upgrade the Central KYC Records Registry. Our superior technology solutioning incorporating cutting edge emerging technologies was instrumental in winning this mandate, a mandate worth 161 crores. This project reaffirms Protean’s leadership in driving digital transformation and its commitment to empowering India’s BFSI sector with innovative and future ready solutions. Another important event for us was our partnership with a prestigious brand ambassador. We partnered with Prankaj Tripathi as a brand ambassador and launched a campaign. Pankaj, known for his humility, authenticity and deep connection with the common man, embodies trust, credibility and honesty values that strongly resonate with Protean’s ethos. Through the innovative Apni Kahani Kahiro campaign. This partnership goes beyond product promotion to tell a very powerful story of empowerment, innovation and inclusivity. With Pankaj at the forefront, we aim to inspire trust and adoption, bridging the gap between robust digital solutions and relatable narratives that enhance ease of living for the people. I am further delighted to share that Protean’s first annual report following our listing has been recognized with two esteemed awards from the League of American Communications Professionals. We received the Gold Award for Excellence in Annual Reporting and the Platinum Award for for outstanding ESG Reporting with the annual report. This global recognition places us Amongst the top 100 companies worldwide, ranking 23rd for delivering exceptional annual reports, a testament to our commitment to. Transparency, innovation and excellence with this now I will hand over to Sandeep Mantri, our CFO for further commentary on the financial performance of the company for this quarter. Sandeep, over to you.
Sandeep Mantri l — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you Suresh. Thank you for joining everyone for this protein earning call for quarter three FY25. Wish you all a very happy New Year as explained by Suresh. You know the Digital India story is really a testament to the transformative power of technology in shaping a new inclusive, efficient and empowered nation.
And Protean is deeply aligned with India’s growth strategy as we have been at the forefront of building India’s dpi integrating emerging technologies across taxation, pension, Social Security, welfare and digital identity and across various sectors. We are extending our focus beyond BFSI to sectors like E Commerce, Commerce, Mobility, Agriculture, Education, scaling, health and sustainability.
Our interoperability network approach is creating digital rails to foster discoverability and efficiency as we remain committed to creating a more inclusive, efficient and empowered nation. With this, let me take you through the financial highlight of Q3FY25 as explained by Suresh. Suresh Our consolidated revenue from operations Is stood at INR202 crores which is a slight decline by 1% on a YUI basis.
Although our tax and pension services business grew by 3% and 12% respectively, led by significant gain in market share as explained by Suresh, the adjusted operating profit for the quarter excluding other income and ECL provisioning stood at INR21 crore with operating margin of 10.2% in line with accounting standard.
We have reversed INR5 crore as part of a settlement which was recorded under other income. While we also provided for processing charges under operating expenses for the adjusted operating profit we have calculation we have excluded the impact of this adjustment.
During the quarter the company strategically collaborated with Panka Sripati as its brand ambassador through the innovative Apni Kahanika Hero campaign. Definitely this will increase the brand recall and brand awareness in the long run. As far as profit after tax is concerned, we grew by 44% YoY increasing from INR15 crore in quarter 3 FY24 to INR23 crore in quarter 3 FY25.
However, post adjustment of that one time ECL normalized paid student INR23 crore for this quarter versus INR22 crore for quarter 3 FY24. The normalized. Pet margin stood at 10.4% for Q3 or FY25 is current quarter compared to 9.5% in last year same quarter this is an increase of 89 basis points. On a YUI basis the eps stood at INR5.66 in current quarter versus INR3.676 in quarter three FY24 last year which is an increase of 50.6%. With a growing market share in our tech services business and with the rising adoption of pension scheme, we are optimistic about future growth potential. Further we are running you know organization wide initiative to improve efficiency, reduce cost and better customer experience which are more AI led digital transformation across our support as well as business function processes. You know as an example we are automating the calling processes using AI and bot and working towards more better customer experience. In all various deliveries. Our balance sheet continues to remain strong with cash and cash equivalent of more than INR750 crore with zero debt. Employee headcount as on 31st December 24th is to same like you know as of 31st March 24th so there is no increase in employee headcount as explained by Suresh with CKYC Prasarp initiatives like CKYC Tatar Banti continue to be at the center stage of India’s DPI story. With that I thank you so much and I open the floor for question and answer session. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you very much.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
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 hands head 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 Rohan Mandora from Aquarius Securities. Please go ahead sir.
Rohan Mandora
Thanks for the opportunity. So the first question is on ondc. Just want to understand if you look at the nine months in the current financial year versus say the nine months of last financial year on the new business revenues, we are not seeing any meaningful uptick in growth now on ONDC as we have as you have explained earlier on the calls that we get revenues 1 from ONDC itself for maintenance of the infrastructure development and maintenance of Infra and other was to be linked with the order volumes.
So while I understand the seller tech is yet to be launched but the reconciliation services, cataloging services and other things there the expectation was 10 to 15 basis point of revenue per leg of transaction could come through. And since the volumes on ONDC have been clocking well. So why is that not transaction? Translating into revenues for us. So just want to understand that piece first.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Sure, Rohan. So Rohan ondc, as you rightly pointed out, we have two streams of revenue. One is at the infrastructure level. Infrastructure is where we provide the gateway and registry services and this today is being reimbursed by WINDC as a as a network facilitator. And the entire model works on a cost plus basis.
So there has been as part of continuous development and engineering further cost optimization in keeping a network running. So while definitely the network traffic has increased, we have been able to embed further technology which has made us able to optimize the network performance and therefore we don’t see any significant jump which can be associated directly with the sort of transaction volumes which have increased over a period of time.
And again, let’s also bear in mind that while the transaction volumes have definitely grown, they’ve not reached an inflection point where you suddenly look at further, you know, creation of infrastructure at a step level. So that is on the infra layer as far as the ecosystem play is concerned, what we term as the innovation layer where we are providing the buyer and seller technology.
We have had a few elements of the biotech being put out there and likewise there are other elements like the extension service of reconciliation and settlement. While transactions are there, these are early stages and again as I was bearing earlier, These are all SaaS based models.
Our current earning when we start is largely with a one time which is more like creating the technology and deploying it. So that one time revenues you are seeing over here, but they are not clearly showing the blip towards an upside but the transactional revenues are kicking in parallel and that is where we will see the numbers moving. But this is going to be clearly SaaS and annuity in nature.
So I hope I am able to address your two points. So that’s why currently it is largely flat due to cost optimization and largely the one time being clocked in, but the transaction numbers still to kick in in a larger number.
Rohan Mandora
So we don’t have any meaningful market share. On the reconciliation side of the business where certain players are earning some,
Suresh Kumar Sethi
We are one of the primary reconciliation and settlement providers. That is one line of business in which there are not very significantly high number of transactions still going through because there is still a bilateral settlement happening. Part of the RSP ecosystem is also going to get more formally frameworked and mandated as we go forward.
Rohan Mandora
Sure.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
There’s still some streamlining working on the RSP front.
Rohan Mandora
Sure. And secondly on the. In the identity solutions business, see, as you indicated in your opening remarks, that customers want to do more vertical integration. They want a single player where they get a lot of services together. And since we had launched eSign Pro almost 2/4 ago, so I want to understand what is the challenge that we are facing in migrating eSign customers to eSign Pro because this line of business is not showing any growth even on a sequential basis for the last two quarters.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Sure. Saron, again on eSign Pro, naturally it is a complete documentation suite providing ESIGN services and it is not just about, you know, upgrading the customer. It requires a further integration with the, with the corporate workflow ecosystem because it’s a workflow tool and then you are allowing your internal paperwork to move in a digital digitized manner and be able to sign it.
So we are very happy to report that we have live customers running with us and they are contributing monthly volumes. And again, very clearly being annuity, we see this, you know, with every month, each set of customers coming. In the last month, customers keep contributing.
So it has been more the integration time and the time to get the customers onboarded. We are naturally again looking at, or rather when I say again, we continue to look at it to see how we can further cut down on the integration and the implementation timeline and make sure that our pipelines which are looking pretty healthy now, how do we make it as soon live as possible? So we will definitely see the E sign numbers picking up and showing in the next few quarters. We already have a pipeline of customers and we have a set of live customers.
This should go up.
Rohan Mandora
Sure. And thirdly, on the Pan 2.0 project which has been announced now as for a media article, around 1435 crores is a sanctioned amount budget for that. And I think as per media, free Pan cards need to be issued to all the current Pan holders. So this comes to roughly 20 rupees per pan card. So hypothetically, if we were to get that project, we would get IT to get 20 rupees per PAN card and against the 42 that we charge currently for re issuance.
Is their understanding correct or is there something else that I’m missing that we should be aware of about the Pine 2.0?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Ron, I’m going to step back for a moment and still continue the E Sign Pro response. Just to complete it, it slipped my mind. I’d also like to add that with E Sign Pro we’ve also now brought in E stamping because this in a way, you know, completes our proposition. We are able to both provide a stamping and assigning service.
And that is very critical, especially for the BFSI sector. So we also see that giving us better product, comprehensive product propositioning into the market. Now coming Back to your second question on the PAN 2.0 RFP. What we see and what is very much there in the public domain as we all have access to it. It’s a turnkey project and that is the value ascribed to the project. There is no outlining of any other operational charges or pricing within that.
Rohan Mandora
Sure, sure. But is that understanding correct that these 70 crore PAN cards will have to be given free of cost to the issuer, to the holders and that thing is built into that 1435 crores of budget estimate?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Not as per my understanding.
Rohan Mandora
Okay,
Suresh Kumar Sethi
But the details are out there in the, in the rfp. That’s, that’s clearly there. But no, that. That is not the understanding.
Rohan Mandora
Sh. Okay. Lastly sir, there were a few announcements in the previous budget on digital public infrastructure. Just wanted to understand has there been any progress made by the government on any of those announcements and do we have any possible opportunity in that space?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Is there a Rohan, is there a reference to anything specific? Because yes, there are plethora of announcements which we see. So currently I’m progressing. Any of those announcements I will mention to you because as SANDEEP also alluded, so we are contributing in the AGRI stack, as you’re already aware, and we continue to remain engaged on that. So that is one significant piece of digital public infrastructure the government is investing both at the central and the state level.
We continue to be deeply embedded in working with ondc and ONDC itself, as you know, is expanding its category footprint from E commerce to open finance to education and skilling, which is honest online network for education and skill transformation. So there are multiple areas coming over there.
Likewise, health is an area in which we are contributing. We currently have mandates with state governments where we are working on ecosystems to enable them on the ABDM ecosystem. And so these are largely the areas. So again, you know, digital commerce, open finance, mobility and transport, health, education and agriculture.
These are the DPI layers in which we are contributing. And yes, you know, as announcements come and as policy decisions get taken, we are very much part of it.
Rohan Mandora
Sure, thanks.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of SANDEEP chain from Baroda PNP Parivas, please go ahead.
Sandeep Jain
Hi, am I audible.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Yes. Sandeep.
Sandeep Jain
Yeah, hi sir. A couple of question first on just, you know, from the previous question in terms of the ondc. So I understand that we have a revenue model in terms of the registry and all, but if you know, in the last three four quarters what we have seen is the mobility plus non mobility transactions are increasing.
Buyer and seller app both have increased. Also number of transactions have increased. Also the only point which I’m trying to make up to what level or to what time we will see that the. Okay, the revenue momentum can increase from here in terms of when we can kind of project as an internal when you are projecting that up to what kind of transaction or what we need to provide more in terms of increase the revenue in this space.
Apart from that we are also giving a cloud services or you know, and we are doing the international businesses also. What kind of, you know, kind of increase in the revenue line item we can foresee for the next, you know, kind of one year kind of thing. Are we seeing new some green shoot in the international business and all and the cloud businesses and all?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Sure. Sandeep, let me. So largely, you know, your focus clearly is on the new business front.
Sandeep Jain
Yeah.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
What is happening under the various sub verticals as we have it? Definitely when we look at the open digital ecosystems, ONDC definitely being one of the more advanced odes, if you may. Right. Because it started earlier. So ondc see one area is clearly there where at the infrastructure level we are supporting the registry and gateway and registry and gateway clearly is infra and uptime and everything put together to support the system at the foundational level.
And as I mentioned, that continues to remain with us as the sole provider of the gateway and the registry. And in that case again the transaction level and the volumes have to go significantly for us to see a higher revenue out of that. Currently it is on a cost plus basis and naturally our focus along with the ONDC team is to work towards optimization.
So today we are supporting a higher traffic, but maybe the cost or the order or what’s going into it is not proportionately expanding because you’re not reaching that threshold where you suddenly have to say we have to now, you know, add infrastructure into it. So the same infrastructure is supporting higher volumes because it was built up till a certain scale and capacity. As far as you know, transactional revenue is concerned on top. You wanted to ask something?
Sandeep Jain
No, please continue.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Okay. As far as the transactional revenue is concerned, so most of the buyer seller applications, there are two streams of revenue. We are getting the one time revenue, but since these are limited number of. Deals, the one time revenue you clearly don’t see in the larger numbers as, you know, making a significant contribution. I think the bigger player is going to be on the transactional revenue and that is the annuity and the ongoing revenue. It’s a multiplier, right, because every customer who starts contributing is only going to look up because the overall ONDC numbers clearly are going up as we’ve seen quarter to quarter. So I would say it’s a contributing business already both at the infrastructure level and at the innovation level we are seeing numbers and we have a pipeline again over here of, you know, biotechnology that we are putting out there and we will soon be also coming out with our seller app and therefore we lab the play on the seller side also. So that is in terms of ondc, specifically to your question,
Sandeep Jain
Just on this Suresh. Sorry, sorry to just on this. So up to what kind of threshold, we will see that. Okay. From here onwards probably, if not the hockey stick, but the annuity income will start to grow by 10%, 15%, 12%, 20% kind of thing. The number of mints at what level of seller app should register in the ONDC or buyer app or how many number of transaction means any kind of number in your mind, any kind of, you know, kind of project we have done in that or probably you take it will be a time taking for another one year, two year kind of.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
So Sandeep, let me put it this way. It’s again not about number of buyer and seller apps. It’s about also, you know, the scale of the partner you are providing services to you. If you see some of the players who are coming in as either sellers or buyers, buyer applications, they have large customer databases or they have a large aggregation of sellers attached to them.
So one thing with which we are happy about is we are today working with some very large players where we have got the mandate who have large either, you know, consumer databases and therefore there is the ability to then scale up quickly because as adoption happens it grows.
But your question, I would say is also largely larger, has a larger ramification of a, I would say a viral growth in the ONDC network. Adoption itself. While we keep seeing good numbers and we are all definitely see a very strong trajectory there, it has to reach an inflection point like UPI that it just sort of grows.
Very inorganic and exponential manner, difficult to predict it. Growth signs are good, but definitely month on month you will start seeing a difference over there because it is annuity in nature. I think that’s the best visibility I can give at this stage.
Sandeep Jain
Sure. And cloud and international business.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Sure. On cloud business again, as we’ve been saying, it’s largely contractual business, partially, in a way. Annuity in nature because these are three, four years ongoing contracts. So we have at this stage, you know, got a monthly run rate running for the business and we clearly see that we’ve gone after well after the sectors that we were targeting. Especially we are looking at BFSI where we have a strong, you know, market access due to our existing customers, public sector healthcare and isv. And that is again something we’ve very clearly again called out that we do have a healthy pipeline, a set of customers who are already contributing into the business and this should again be a growth month on month. The reason I’m very focused on annuity is because if I end the month this month on a 10, next month is only incremental, the 10 again comes next month. So I think that is very, very important for us that most of our new business investments both on Data Stack and ODE are going to be SaaS and annuity led coming to international. I’m in a very happy to state that we are currently at very advanced stage and we should be able to show some good deals coming in very shortly in the next couple of quarters. So while we definitely have a very broad based engagement, we are currently engaged with more than 19 countries. There are active opportunities, bids have been submitted and we’ve been updating the teams earlier also. But we’ve been shortlisted in around four to five bids and we expect a movement on that.
Sandeep Jain
The last is something on the data keeping question. So the other initiative and other which is a 7 crore of revenue, it includes all the things right international businesses and everything in that
Suresh Kumar Sethi
All the new businesses, tax, pension, identity are all clubbed under that or clubbed under that.
Sandeep Jain
Okay, fine, thanks.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to answer questions from all participants please limit your questions to two or three participants as there are several people waiting for their turn. The next question is from the line ofDhruv Shah from Dalal and Barocha. Please go ahead.
Dhruv Shah
Yeah, so thank you for the opportunity. So most of my questions have been answered. I just wanted to check in the last quarter you had mentioned about some pricing pressure, competitive pricing we’ve been facing in E signatures. So is that still continuing?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
So when I had mentioned pricing drove I was talking to the more commoditized service as an ESP which means we are an E sign service provider and we are certified by the Central Certifying authority to act as a provider of certification to anybody who builds the. Application layer on top of it. So yes, it is commoditized and therefore there’s always a push to, you know, sort of price, price compression comes in. But that is where as we were saying earlier, the vertical integration into a full flight digital suite like E Sign Pro, where we’ve also now incorporated stamping is where you are able to create value added services and you can command a premium based on the features you can build in your solution. So yes, the answer is yes.
Dhruv Shah
Right. And just one last continuing to the previous participant question on the ODE segment. So historically it has been observed that, you know, your H2 used to be a multifold growth over H1 but this year it’s kind of a degrowth on a Y basis and flat sequentially. So any particular segment that we are facing this pressure, say for example like ondcs, we are facing pressure. But in terms of your Vidyarpi and Vidyalakmi, are you facing any slowdown in that segment as well?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Not really because see sometimes when we are comparing quarter on quarter in certain quarters we also get some, you know, revenues coming in. So other than the annotate. Right. Annotate will follow a very clean path of, you know, positive trend going forward. But any one time revenue which comes in gets clogged in a certain quarter at times can show a different projection over there.
But otherwise, no, there is no specific call out to say that this particular line of business and the new businesses has gone down. We are still keeping all the businesses moving forward. Definitely.
Dhruv Shah
Sure. Thank you so much.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line ofPrakash Kapadia from Spark pms. Please go ahead.
Prakash Kapadia
Yeah, thanks. A couple of questions from my end. You know, just curious to understand the employee cost increase on a sequential basis at a time when, you know, there has not been much of addition to the employee count and you know, what could be the run rate going forward on employee cost.
Secondly, you know, if you could, you know, share or update the status on, you know, the international RFPs which we have received any progress on that front? And you know, on the pan side, have you know, bids been sent to the IT department by when we would get to know more details or awarding of the project.
And on the pan issuances, is there some seasonality because we’ve seen some decline on a sequential. Basis on the PAN numbers. So those were my questions.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
So the cost launch for your question on employee cost. So you know in last two or three quarters we have many leadership hiring and those days that was the main reason. Plus we have increments also, you know, affected in last one or two quarters which are the main reasons for, you know, you know, increasing employee cost.
Having said that, I think this is the level we current quarter is the level where we should look at our employee cost, you know, going forward.
Sandeep Mantri l
Prakash, I’ll take the other two questions on international as I mentioned to you. So while you know the broad brush of number of engagements with countries, we are now almost connected with around 19 countries but very clearly five shortlisted bids and we are pretty much in advanced stage over there.
But naturally we’ll be announcing as and when we get the contract in hand. So things moving well on that front and we should be hopefully able to show something in the coming quarters on that front. We also incidentally launched our or set up a Protean International which is our wholly owned subsidiary out of Dubai and we will be centering our operations over there into multiple countries. So that has also taken place recently on the front of Pan.
The bid dates, the RFP dates are still somewhere in or rather the bidding dates deadline is now somewhere in February. There has been extension recently and as far as the overall PAN business is concerned I would say there is a level of seasonality but it is also a little bit of as I was earlier calling out, some triggers do come in because see when a new team gets launched in a particular state or you know, at the center, a lot of times we are now observing that Pan does become a qualification criteria or one of the identities to be provided by the beneficiaries.
So you do see a sense of spike coming over there for people applying for Pan card. The other interesting trend which we were seeing last year was largely the Aadhaar Pan linkage deadlines. If you remember there were multiple deadlines which got extended but last year actually it finally came to completion and that was the time when we saw a spike in the PAN issuance volumes.
So more than seasonality I would say it is more event driven and that does at times creates a certain level of up and down quarter on quarter but otherwise we remain very confident. Because I’ve been saying earlier also that PAN penetration in the country. Is around 35%. It’s not like Aadhaar that every child born is getting a national identity card. But PAN is more coming into play when either as we are now seeing in Bharat, there are beneficiaries who want a PAN card when they have to get a DVT scheme or you are getting at the point of account opening when you get your first job. So PAN is much later being called out by the people. And with our youth population coming into working age and so on, we do see 6 to 7 cr tams getting issued on the average. That has been the trend now for quite a few years. So these numbers continue to remain. I think what we are doing well is that we are increasing our market share. So our market share from the from even during the course of this year from the first to third quarter has gone up by almost 5%.
Prakash Kapadia
Okay, so. So given, you know, some of these initiatives, we would remain confident of, you know, PAN grow trajectory continuing in the next few years, right?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Yes, absolutely.
Sandeep Mantri l
Absolutely.
Prakash Kapadia
Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of from Estate Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello sir. Thank you for taking the question. So sir, I wanted to understand the agri agristax space. The government has set out 2800 budget for the same and around a central government is contributing to a large portion of it. And also the minister has been saying that there are around 30 to 40 lakh farmer IDs already issued.
So whether we on this stage and what would be the competition we must be facing and could you quantify like out of 2800 what could be available to DPI players like us?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
So Prem over here. Actually as we’ve been calling out earlier, we are involved at a very core level with the central government, the Ministry of Agriculture to contribute towards building the core agri stack. And just to take two minutes and define it, the core agri stack is the central framework of technology being developed both for enabling sharing of exchange of data between center and state.
Agri being a state subject, most of the data in terms of registries, crop registry, land registry, soil health registry, those databases sit with the states. But to enable any use cases for say credit or insurance or advisory, you want to have the ability given to the farmer in his hand to be able to share that data. And that is where we are building the entire registry architecture for the central agri stack. Plus we are building the consent framework in which the data can be shared again very much also in compliance with the DPTP architecture. That is what we are doing and we are working with the central government on that. And this particular mandate we are running it. There are naturally other entities involved in different elements of the AGRI stack. And likewise similar opportunities are there in states which are, you know, coming in and running the PoCs with the central government. Currently around 12 states are running a proof of concept. The larger budget will naturally unlock over a period of time. But currently this is the mandate we have and we are working on this.
Unidentified Participant
So sir, could you please quantify the amount of the amount the revenues which can flow in and how would be the revenue structure would be RFPs which we will bid to the states and how would the revenue flow from this segment? Because this is fairly complex to understand.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Currently there is no broad based RFP which has been put out. Some of the mandates we’ve got are based on competency and proficiency and we’ve participated in certain, you know, sort of frameworks where we’ve got the mandate for building the code stack. I’m assuming down the line there will be further, you know, amplification of work along the line of RFPs and we should see some of the budget manifesting over there.
Sandeep Mantri l
You know, quantification may not be, you know, feasible at this stage. Probably we have to see how this space, you know, continues to grow and how government, you know, fixes budget for DPIs.
Unidentified Participant
Other question was on the PAN 2.0 event actually sir, I wanted to understand the RFP which is floated. Does this actually the contracts, the number of players and take it to the one person who will win the bid and the realizations can drop by Almost, let’s say 50% for an issuance. Is this understanding correct?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
No, I would put it this way, that this is the primary objective of the RFP is to refresh the tech stack which IT today has, right? Because today while we act as the agency for collecting the subscribers or the order applicants data and we pass it on to itd, the core stack on which the pan number is issued and the deduplication and everything is done is running on the IT stack.
So the primary objective is to refresh the IT stack and along with it naturally they are looking at at 360 degrees to say what will be the new way of application straight through processes. And that’s what really the new stack is all about. Largely RFP is for somebody to come and refresh the complete IT stack and also build the ncb. Services of you know, pinging into the database for any validation and verification.
Unidentified Participant
That is what I wanted to understand because validation in the RFP is completely free is what has been talked about. And I guess the realizations would drop to let’s say 50 rupees for pan insurance. Is this right for us as well?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
So that is not. When you say 50, I don’t know where you are picking that number from. But as I mentioned earlier this is a turnkey project. It’s in the form of an RFP and that is what largely the construct of the, of the, of the bandit is as of now.
Unidentified Participant
Sure. So sir, one question on the account keeping. Actually there was a company called Alankit where I guess we settled a code dispute for around 32 crores. I don’t know, it was not issued on the company’s website but can you please explain us about it and was it already sufficient and how would it provision going forward?
Sandeep Mantri l
Yeah, so I. So this was already provisioned. This, this was a you know, dispute with one of our supplier and basically a supplier who store our document and we finally you know amicably settled the dispute and we already provided for all the numbers in the books already. So there is no implication, financial implication as far as this dispute settlement is concerned.
The only implication is that we have because of accounting practices we have put 5 crore in other income and same amount. We have put 5 crore as a operating expenses and that is what the adjusted operating profit talks about. That’s the only impact otherwise it was already provided for you.
Unidentified Participant
Was there any loss of date of Pan cards which was, which happened with this? Oh sure. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please limit your questions to one per participant as we have a long queue. The next question is from the line of Tarshal Javeri from Crown Capital. Please go ahead.
Darshil Jhaveri
Hello. Good evening sir. Thank you so much for taking my question. Sir, a lot of my questions have been answered. Hope I’m audible. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. So yeah, so just wanted to know like we are working on a lot of new initiatives right now but our revenue is nearly similar to what it was, you know, last year so.
Or even the last few quarters have been in the same range. So just want to know any kind of revenue guidance that we could have for you know, next year and what would we like our operating margins to be like? They were around 15% right now. Fallen a bit. Right. So just wanted to know what kind of margins and revenue we could look forward in FY26.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Yeah, sure Darshan. So as I earlier also mentioned. What you are seeing are the line of new business and it is flat. But clearly where I was stressing the point was that currently we have B2B customers who come on board from where we started last year. There has been additional customers and they are all running on an annuity and a SaaS model. We definitely will see month on month uptick coming from there and going forward, definitely, you know, the annuity business will start contributing. So that is, that is in large the, you know, in essence the summary between especially the data stack, the cloud and the ODE business, the international business will naturally be more chunkier because that is where we are looking at RFPs to come into play. And other than that, the RFPs which we’ve won in the course of even last quarter or earlier this year, they are also again part of some of these stacks and they’ll also start contributing but they are milestone driven so you don’t see the numbers coming into it. So as you’ve seen we mentioned about it, we’ve got the Sarsai CKYC records registry mandate coming to us for 2.0. So that is largely driven again under our data stack vertical. And early during the course of the year we had got another mandate from Sir Sai for the developing the BUDS registry which is like a digital public infrastructure which comes under our DPR business. So some of these milestone payments will also come in and we will definitely see the new business contribution, you know, going up from where it is now. I will not be in a position to make a forward looking statement and give a specific number, but largely we should definitely see this coming in in the next quarters.
Sandeep Mantri l
Yeah Suresh, largely. I think our aspiration remains where we stated earlier also that our new businesses in next three years will contribute, you know, to a certain percentage of our total revenue as far as margins are concerned. As explained by Suresh. These are mostly, you know, sales or annuity based businesses which we are building.
So the margin profile is, you know, like, is likely to improve, you know, with each quarter passing once we start building up revenue in each of these new lines and you will see, you know, good margin next two to three years.
Darshil Jhaveri
Okay, so, so just, so I, I understand the point but so could you just, you know what could be our inflection point? Like maybe next year, like first quarter or you know, like how do we see more of the annuity coming in? I think that’s what I think everyone’s also been trying to, you know, understand or gather like you know, our ONDC business or the international. Could you just maybe have some timeline where I’m not saying any figures necessary but just a rough timeline so we could also understand, Sir.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Sure. So there’s a couple of things to look at each business. Is going to be slightly different. So I’m going to still split it so that, you know, we have that level of, we have that ability to, you know, give it to you as, as much in detail as possible. So data is a. Data stack is a business where we are, you know, definitely looking at assets like eSign Pro, which are a digital documentation suite. Now coming with E stamping also, which is a completely B2B business where we are enabling corporates to do their digital document signing or contract signing using the E stamping provision. So every deal that we get ultimately then becomes annuity. So my input is that today we have a set of customers, we have a healthy pipeline, there is a timeline for integration. So we should actually see a quarter on quarter uptick coming on those. I think that will be a steady growth coming on the data stack side, the ODE side is a bit more trickier because you are looking at the overall network impact. Now fortunately for us, if we look at one of the four odes, which is ondc, ONDC has got a healthy traction. We are seeing good jump in number of transactions and at this stage for us it becomes B2B. And again a similar thing plays out that each of our B2B relationships start transacting and then adding volumes to it. But there’s always a period of adoption because for example, if a bank or a network aggregator gets plugged into ndc, it still takes them some time before they get some organic growth in their number of transactions and customers. So I think it will take, you know, I would say some quarters for that to start building up. And other than that, then when we talk about international or we talk about any of the other RFP led initiatives under each of these, those largely we’ve seen are, you know, four to five year contracts, around 60% of the payments come within the first year, year and a half because that is where you do the entire technology build and deployment. And after that, 40% of that, you know, goes into AMC based annual payments coming over the next, you know, three to four years. So that is generally the nature of the business. So that is not annuity in nature, goes without saying, but it gives you a four to five years sort of, you know, visibility and that, that would be, I would say largely the course for the international and RFP led business domestically also.
Operator
Thankyou. The next question is from the line of Apuru Bandi from Whitestone Financial Advisors. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi sir, thanks for the opportunity. So how is the traction in account aggregation segment? If you can throw some light on that part. And my second question is on do we have exclusivity to build agri stack and health tech or.
Unidentified Participant
We can expect some other players to come there as well. Thank you.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Thanks above for the question. Now, account aggregators, as you know, it’s basically linked very closely to the DPDP Act. Also this is a sectoral regulator and they’ve come out with their framework. So this is coming under all the BFSI regulators coming together. So there is overall traction. I mean if I look at the overall numbers yesterday, the number of financial accounts linked is in around 11 crores and the transaction enabled are also going up. But I think couple of parts I would like to add over here.
This particular line of business, the economic and the commercial model still is in process to be established because as we know that the ecosystem considers of consists of the financial information providers which are the regulated entities which have information of the users and the financial information users which could be, which could be lending entities, it could be entities which are doing personal finance management.
So the entire commercial model is something which as a body that this ecosystem is putting together. So then we will see some clearly well defined, you know, sort of numbers coming into play over there. But still at a preliminary stage, ecosystem today has 14 as. And the other thing which is equally important is that a level of interoperability has to come between the account aggregators and there is work currently going on along with, you know, RBI to see how we can create an open sort of net where all aggregators can be connected directly with all the information providers and users so that it becomes not a bilateral integration play, but it becomes more network based.
So these are a few things which have to come into play which will then make a difference to the account aggregator ecosystem. Yes, the level of adoption and growth definitely is there as we see it. But a commercial model needs to definitely be in play for us to start talking about some meaningful numbers in this regard.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, Sam, on the intuition,
Sandeep Mantri l
Please come back.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Okay. On the agri stack about. Yeah, you had a second question on the agri stack. No, there would be multiple players who will be playing. There’s a scope of work that we are working on so that naturally is exclusive to us. But being a very large national project and having multiple parts to it. Right. We are working on the consent and the data architecture framework for exchange of data between center and state. There are other projects parallel going on.
So for this project naturally we are currently the providers and supporting. The POCs that are going on with the state governments at this stage.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubham Segal from Skill Ventures. Please go ahead.
Shubham Sehgal
Hello?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Yeah,
Shubham Sehgal
Yeah, so I actually wanted to ask that like at a company level, how do we predict our financials for the next two, three years? Like do we target any specific top line margins or you know, like do we track any specific metrics? So just wanted to get an idea of the visibility going ahead for let’s say two, three years.
So like could you give us any color on that?
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Yeah, sure. Shiva. When we are doing our business modeling, considering the lines of businesses we are in, there’s naturally a very clear historical trajectory that we have in play for our existing businesses which are core to us, which is on the front of taxation, pension and identity. All three as we’ve seen have historically grown around 8 to 10% year on year.
And considering we’ve already, I mean I’ll still mention it, we already, we’ve seen headroom in all of these, right, because we did speak about continuity of issuance of new Pan cards every year. Pension is a very under penetrated market, so huge headroom over there and I think things will only sort of get more and more better in terms of adoption and growth because both the regulator and the government are very keen how we can become a pension society.
So whether it’s new products like NPS Vatsalya or the push that we hear from PFRD as the regulator, the fact that strong focus on utter pension Yojana across the banking ecosystem, these things are going to naturally push the growth of this business and identity. Clearly more plays in line with overall growth of digital India.
You know, more accounts opened digitally, more E stamps done, more E signing done. So that plays over there. So we keep a general historical perspective and what we see as growth factors and if any of these has an upside for any particular reason, we build it into our business plan.
Coming to the new businesses, these are businesses which we expect will give us the incremental growth momentum. So as an organization we are largely, as we’ve been saying, working on a two to three year timeline there from a 95, 5 sort of split between the three core businesses and a set of new businesses.
We want to move towards a 75, 25 sort of diversification and that is where we see the new business chipping in and adding to the incremental growth coming to the company and new businesses. Again there is a strong view on. So our business modeling is done on what sort of acquisitions we are looking at. What is the average deal ticket size. We see both in high value, medium and small customers and we build it on annuity profiles and RFP businesses again are more to say what are the opportunities out there. And we try to do an estimation of you know, what we see as winnable propositions and how much can we factor in the revenues for a particular year. So that is the way we build the business modeling for the coming years.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Aman Vijay from Astute Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Aman VIJ
Good evening sir. Two questions. I’ll ask both and then you can answer. First on the ONDC side sir. So we have around 77 buyer apps available and 187 seller apps and I think logistics there are 34. So out of these we are only present in biotech. So for how many apps have we designed this biotech for?
And similarly when are you expecting to launch your seller tech app and your logistics app? Eventually for us to scale do we require this number to be around 10, 15, 20 or this can even scale with 3, 5 customers. This is the first question on ONDC. Second question is on the number of transactions on data stack side if you can give us that number excluding account aggregator.
So I’m talking about E Sign Pro Rise with Protean Protean X Protein Life. What is this numbers for 9 months FY25 and do you expect this Protein X Protein life to become like a 30, 50 crore business in the next 12 years each? Efine Pro also. So these are the bot questions.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Okay, thanks Aman for your questions. Now on the ONDC front as I mentioned that we are today working with out of the out of the overall ecosystem that you counted out we are working with a set of buyers and sellers currently where we are in the process of integration and some of them are very close to getting launched.
So that is where the the actual rubber will hit the ground and we will start seeing transactional revenues because as we are deploying this technology the one time revenue comes in or the transactional revenue should come in. Roughly the numbers as we speak today we are looking in double digits around 1012 deals which are currently in the process and that should kick in and from there naturally it’s a build up from an annuity perspective as far as the data related businesses are concerned.
If you see under businesses like Protean Rice we actually earn on a API customer. Consumption so it is per API. And again the complexity of the API depends, you know whether you’re doing say for example if you look at identity or an onboarding journey for a financial institution you have EKYC or you have eauthentication depending on the, you know complexity of data you are sharing. The per API cost also differs so it’s difficult to you know give a certain sense over here but naturally these API consumptions are large. We are talking about 60, 70 lakh APIs being consumed and underlying there’s no unit cost per API to that extent. Each one has a different so it depends on the mix that is getting consumed over there. And you had a question on. If you can just repeat it, you asked something else also.
Operator
Sorry to interrupt sir, the current participant has been disconnected. We will move on to the next question. It’s from the line of from think wise wealth. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So I just had a question on pan 2.0. So the best case and the worst case I just wanted to understand say we win the bid so the 1400 crore revenue, how would the revenue recognition go? Is it spread across five to six years like a source I KYC order or like how is it and the margins basically and similarly on the worst case if we don’t win the bid like what happens?
Like do we still accrue some revenue or Basically I just want to understand that 49% of our revenue comes from Pan issuances. So what would be the implications on that? And on like to like basis the Society Revenue 161 order that we’ve got have we booked any revenue this quarter from that? Thanks.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
On this PAN 2.0 project it is a turnkey project wherein you know revenue will be accounted as per you know India and based on effort estimate effort spend so initial year because this is a turnkey project initially it will be you know largest share of revenue. It will be booked in you know two or three years and then later on it will be smaller share of the revenue.
So I guess you know what whatever is the outcome Approximately I guess 60 to 65% should be for first two to three years and you know for remaining years it should be about 30 to 40%. As far as Sir Sai is concerned I think for first 18 months I think we will book most of the revenue which is about 60, 65% and for you know 30, 35 remaining three years, three, four years will be you know the major part of the revenue will be get booked.
So basically this is this is your project Revenue Accounting. Because these are
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And if we don’t win the pan 2.0, what happens? The implications basically the bid.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
See as I mentioned to you again depends on, you know, how the, once the project goes into execution, how it works with the ecosystem. Because today a large part of our business is around, you know, getting the applicants data onto the IT department. The core redesign project is talking about redesigning the core stack now how the distribution services work, how the citizen services work at the last mile that will have its own sort of, you know, workaround to it.
We will get more clarity as we go into the project. So it’s, it’s difficult to currently put out a revised revenue model or a business model around it. Have to see more clarity as the project gets implemented.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Due to time constraint, this was the last question for today’s conference call. I now hand the conference over to the management for their closing comments.
Suresh Kumar Sethi
Thank you everyone for your continued support and for all the questions that you asked. Gives us a chance to reflect. It’s definitely for us consistent performance. We’ve seen strategic growth with some of the large mandates we’ve got over the course of the last quarters or last three quarters for this year.
And we continue to look ahead focused on driving value creation and keeping a strong focus on our annuity businesses which we believe as we build them, they will become very consistent contributors to our core businesses and, and complement them and grow as we go forward.
And clearly again our trust remains in India’s digital transformation story. And as we heard, you know, multiple DPIs getting created, multiple engagements happening. As a DPI company, we remain very, very positive about the future of India’s DPI growth and look forward to contributing towards the same. Thank you very much
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of this. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.