Protean eGov Technologies Ltd (BSE: 544021) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 22, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Pushpa Mani — Vice President and Head, Investor Relations
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Prakash Kapadia — Analyst
Dhruv Shah — Analyst
Rohan Mandora — Analyst
Ashish Pareek — Analyst
Darshil Pandya — Analyst
Pratham Kankariya — Analyst
Kamlesh Bagmar — Analyst
Shreyas Pimple — Analyst
Vishal Mehta — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Protean eGovernance Technologies Limited Q4 and FY ’25 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Go India Advisors. [Operator Instructions]
I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpa Mani, Head, Investor Relations and VP. Thank you, and over to you, ma’am.
Pushpa Mani — Vice President and Head, Investor Relations
Thanks, Darwin. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the quarter four and FY ’25 results discussion. You must have received the results in the investor presentation of the Company, which is available on BSE and NSE as well as on the Company’s website. As usual, we will start the forum with the opening remarks by our Managing Director and CFO and then we will open the floor for the question-and-answer session. If any of your questions remain unanswered, you may reach out to us afterwards.
The management on today’s call would be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO; Mr. V Easwaran, COO; Mr. Sandeep Mantri, CFO; and myself, Pushpa, Head IR.
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.
Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Suresh Sethi — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Pushpa. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today. I’ll do a quick summary of the year gone by. So clearly, we have been on a journey of building strategic technical capability this year in the space of open source technologies and establishing centers of excellence around emerging tech. FY ’25 has clearly been a defining area — year for us in terms of technological maturity. We have secured several mission-critical population scale mandates during the course of the year, while competing against leading industry players. These mandates include the strengthening of the central KYC infrastructure of the nation under the CERSAI mandate of CKYCRR 2.0. We’ve got the mandate for expanding the central Agristack. And at the same time, in the health sector, we are supporting the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission in digitizing Maharashtra’s Aapla Dawakhana clinics. As we continue to innovate and push boundaries, we are equally proud to consolidate our position as a thought leader in the digital public infrastructure space.
Our journey this year has been marked by significant milestones for conceptualizing DPI Box as an approach to its actual manifestation in the form of impactful solutions. This framework has been a game changer, enabling us to rapidly deploy and scale digital public infrastructure efficiently. The modular approach has allowed us to work with various countries on social impact projects, demonstrating our ability to adapt and scale our solutions to meet diverse needs. By leveraging this framework, we’ve been able to drive meaningful impact with our first of its kind Education DPI in Morocco and our recent health sector win in Ethiopia. We are happy to share that we have further reinforced our commitment to take the India stat global by establishing Protean International, a 100% subsidiary based in DMCC, UAE to manage our international operations. Aligned with India’s DPI visionary framework, which is built on open standards and protocols, we continue to contribute to ODEs, Open Digital Ecosystems across e-commerce, transport and mobility, agriculture, education and skilling, health and sustainability.
One of our critical interventions this year has also been in the space of pension and social security. This was the successful rollout of UPS, the Unified Pension Scheme, a landmark pension reform designed to provide long-term financial security and inclusive social protection for central government employees. As the primary Central Recordkeeping Agency in the country, we were interested with the design, development and deployment of this mission-critical initiative. The Company successfully delivered a robust, fully compliant platform in record time, demonstrated — demonstrating technical excellence and commitment. Another key initiative in the pension space this year has been the introduction of NPS Vatsalya, a first of its kind pension scheme, allowing individuals to join the NPS system from infancy, thereby offering an extending vested period and encouraging early financial discipline. Since its launch, the scheme has seen very strong traction with over 1 lakh accounts being opened in the last six months, Protean holds a dominant market share of nearly 75% in this category.
Overall, we continue to maintain a dominant position in the pension services segment with a 97% market share. We delivered strong growth of 12% in FY ’25, onboarding 1.3 crore new subscribers and adding more than 2,500 corporates to the NPS ecosystem. Both NPS and APY continue to scale, and we have recently crossed 8.2 crore cumulative subscribers. In our tax services business, while revenue declined due to an industry-wide slowdown in PAN issuance, this was largely due to the election cycle and the delayed rollout, therefore, of new government schemes. But we have made significant gains in market share, which increased by nearly 5%, closing at 56.6% in FY ’25.
During the year, we issued approximately 4.4 crore PAN cards. And out of these, 53% were processed via a paperless mode. Given that PAN penetration in the country is still below 40% and considering its increasing importance for financial inclusion and welfare access, we believe this segment holds meaningful long-term growth potential. The Digital India movement continues to gain momentum, serving as a cornerstone of the country’s digital economy. Protean is strategically investing in several next-gen value-added solutions like eSignPro, a comprehensive digital documentation suite, and RISE with Protean, a multi-sectoral API marketplace. All these solutions will enable seamless onboarding into financial systems, welfare programs and pension, driving mass scale inclusion across India. We also took deliberate steps this year to bring our brands closer to the people.
We were delighted to welcome Pankaj Tripathi as the face of Protean, who is himself an icon of trust, humility and authenticity. Our digital-first Apni Kahani Ka Hero campaign featured multiple video assets. It garnered over 35 million views and reached more than 15 million users across B2B, B2C and B2G audiences. While Sandeep will walk you through our financial details, I am pleased to share that our revenue for FY ’25 stood at INR841 crores and PAT at INR92 crores. I’m also glad to report that we have received INR36 crores, which have been long pending dues towards storage charges from the Department of Tax, the Income Tax Department. This reinforces the continued trust and confidence placed in us by the department in managing this population scale mandate for the last 22 years.
With that, I will hand you over to Sandeep. Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Suresh. Good afternoon, everyone. As Suresh highlighted, the Digital India journey is a powerful example of how technology can enable inclusive, efficient and citizen-centric governance. And Protean has been a core part of this story from taxation to pension, to social security, welfare and digital identity. Today, we are extending this foundation across newer sectors, such as e-commerce, mobility, health, education, skilling, agriculture and sustainability. Our groundbreaking DPI-in-a-Box solution is a shining example of how technology expertise can govern the citizens and govern the country in this space. Our interoperable platform-led approach is helping build a digital race of tomorrow, designed to improve discoverability, transferability and service delivery at scale.
Let me touch broadly on the financials for the year. We have reported a consolidated revenue from operations at INR841 crores in FY ’25 versus INR882 crores in FY ’24, which is a decline of 5% Y-o-Y, mainly due to decline in our tax revenue because of the market share — market shrinkage while we have gained our market share, some significantly by 500 basis points. Our identity service revenue also declined by 13%, and our pension services revenue, however, grew robustly by 12%, and other businesses also saw a 9.5% increase, showcasing a diversified momentum. EBITDA for the year stood at INR149 crores in FY ’25 versus INR157 crores in FY ’24, a decline of 5% Y-o-Y largely due to increase in other expenses, like brand promotion, strategic investment, RFP-led businesses and accelerated intangible asset depreciation.
However, improved collection, which is what Suresh talked about, led to provision reversal, partially mitigating this decline in EBITDA. PAT for the year stood at INR92 crores in FY ’25, a decline of 5% over FY ’24. We delivered an EPS of INR22.83 for the year. And we — Board has recommended a final dividend of INR10 per share, representing 100% payout on face value and approximately 40% payout on PAT, reflecting our commitment to sharing profit with shareholders. We continue to maintain our debt-free status and are looking to accelerate our internal cost lever at a sustainable rate. Our asset light model, coupled with strong cash flow, has resulted in a cash equivalent and marketable security balance of more than INR800 crores as on March 31, 2025. We are also pleased to announce an update regarding our outstanding receivable from the Income Tax Department for storage services. Despite provisioning for these long pending dues in our books as per our expected credit loss provision policy, we have consistently maintained that this is a sovereign debt and would be realized, and we are delighted to confirm that we have recently received INR36 crores. Out of the money received, we have reversed INR21 crores of expected credit loss taken in earlier quarters.
And we have set off another INR15 crores toward receivable lying in our books, eliminating the need for any further provisioning for this item. To simplify the structure and to execute operation in a cost-efficient manner, we have demerged a significant portion of our 100% subsidiary, which is Protean InfoSec Services Limited to the parent company. We have proposed the demerger scheme to the shareholders and Board. Key projects win this year include CERSAI mandate for strengthening the central KYC stack, extended scope of Central Agristack and ABDM-led digitization project of Aapla Dawakhana clinics across Maharashtra. These key wins not only underscore our expertise, but also promise the long-term revenue visibility and the growth momentum. Operationally, we have made significant progress across our annuity-led businesses including eSignPro and Protean RISE, building predictable and recurring revenue streams for the future.
Moving forward, our strategic priority, as discussed by Suresh, are focused on a few key areas. These are monetizing new products, new digital products and building upon RFP-led businesses, enhancing our operational efficiencies through AI-driven process transformation and cost control, consolidating our leadership in India’s digital public infrastructure, DPI space, while expanding this India digital stack globally.
With that, I will open the floor for a question-and-answer session. Thank you for your patience.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Prakash Kapadia with Spark PMS. Please go ahead.
Prakash Kapadia
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions from my end. On the revenue side, just wanted to delve deeper. We’ve now had an installed base of around 55 crores plus PAN cards in the system. So in the near term, till PAN 2 project starts, what kind of addition of PAN card is possible? And by when do you think this PAN 2 project will go live? I think two days ago on the call, you had alluded you were going to check what could be the reason of we not moving forward. So any update on that? And on the PAN 2, is there a scope of work, which is now defined? So what I’m trying to understand is, is there a risk of vendor consolidation? Because there are processes which you had highlighted in terms of the PAN card issuance. So would we continue to do the process and scope of work, which we are currently doing? Or will there be a vendor consolidation? So any clarity on that will help.
Secondly, any updates on the global tenders in terms of finalization or closure, if you could highlight? And thirdly, on the NPS business, from a long-term perspective, is there any risk to growth given that most of the IT returns are now being filed in the new regime? Do you see any structural slowdown or our longer-term growth tapering off on the NPS side of the business? So those were my questions on the revenue side, please.
Suresh Sethi
Thank you, Prakash. Thanks for your questions. So I will start with first, your reference to potential in the PAN business itself. So while you’re right that around 55 crore Indians have a PAN card, PAN, see, as we’ve always been discussing, is not a saturation ID. The heart today is given to every child at birth. But PAN usually is taken up when you are either entering the workforce or you’re opening your first bank account. And likewise, today, we are also seeing the propensity of people getting a PAN card when they are availing government benefit schemes. So 55 crores means that is still less than 40% of the country, which has a PAN card. And every year, there is addition to the working population, new schemes are getting announced.
So historically speaking, at least for the last three years, four years, every year, there have been 6 crores to 7 crores new PAN cards getting issued. And we haven’t seen any slowdown in that. And considering that people will keep coming into the working space, new schemes will come, we expect this momentum to continue and this business to build. Also secondly, as we mentioned, this year was a good year from us in further consolidating our market share. We moved our market share on to — by gaining five percentage points up to 56.6%, and which still means there’s headroom for us to further improve our market share. So for us, we see this as a business, which has good momentum overall in terms of issuance and our ability to secure more business down the line by keeping at what we are doing well currently.
Coming to your second question with regard to PAN 2.0, as I think we discussed earlier also, the scope of PAN 2.0 is completely separate from the mandate we received from ITD in 2003, which was for processing and issuance of PAN cards. So as you are aware, there is a complete process before a PAN card gets issued. So there is a part of the work where you — where the applicant provides their information while applying for the PAN card. They provide their identity document. So all this information that we collect from the applicant is passed on to the IT department in a secure manner by us. So we are doing the last mile, information and ID and data collection, on that behalf of the PAN applicant and providing it to the IT department.
The IT department then has their system in which they do the allotment of the PAN number. And then once they allotted the number, they give us the number, we print the PAN card, and we again distribute it back to the PAN applicant. Now the entire PAN 2.0 RFP, the scope of that is around doing a technological revamp of ITD systems, which are today used for doing the allotment of the PAN number. The mandate which we have in terms of processing of PAN applicants information and sharing the data with ITD is not part of this RFP. So therefore, the two are separate from a scope of work perspective. And secondly, to your question, would there be any consolidation of scope? My answer would be no, because this RFP and its scope is already defined. The mandate we have from the ITD department is different and continues to be there. So the two will be completely separate.
Coming to global tenders. As we had mentioned that currently, we are happy to report that we were finally able to open our account in the international business. We were able to get two mandates, one in the country of Morocco, where we worked on the — where we worked on the DPI-in-a-Box — Education DPI. And the second is we were awarded a health initiative in the country of Ethiopia. Other than that, we are currently engaged with almost 20-plus countries between Africa, Southeast Asia and Middle East. And I would say, almost four or five mandates are advanced stage of discussion, but we continue to be engaged on these multiple mandates in terms of global tenders. Your last question was with regard to the NPS business. Now the CRA business, as we clearly are glad to report that we have a 97% market share. This is a licensed business. So each of the central recordkeeping agencies today hold a license.
So just like any other bank license, we have a license from PFRDA to run this business. And as far as pension penetration is concerned, again, we all know that our pension penetration in our country is a bare 6% versus some of the developed countries where you’re talking about numbers like 70%, 75%. So we again see a huge headroom for pension penetration, even schemes like Atal Pension Yojana, which are clearly meant for part of the society, which is economically weaker sections, which are basically the area where we have Jan Dhan Accounts. So today, we have almost 55 crores plus Jan Dhan accounts, and there are only 5 crores or 5.5 crores odd Atal Pension Yojana subscribers. So there’s a huge 10 times headroom over there. So we clearly see in the pension business, there is a large headroom for us to grow that business.
Prakash Kapadia
Understood. And on the global tender which you just mentioned, Suresh, on Morocco and Ethiopia, any revenue size or quantification you could give and when would revenue start from recognition? How long is the project or any size if you could give, that would be helpful.
Suresh Sethi
Prakash, generally, we don’t do project size, but I’ll give you a general sense that when we are looking at the international projects, there are — at least some of the DPI-related projects are in the form of RFPs. So these could be anywhere from three years to five years in terms of the overall mandate, which means the first year or so has taken to develop the technology and deploy it and the remaining years then form a part of an AMC. So any mandate will have a payment structure where 40% to 60% of the payment comes after one year, one and a half years and the remaining comes staggered over the remaining period in the form of equitable AMC charges. The projects again in these countries, because we are looking at Africa and the larger part of the African subcontinent, we’ve seen mandates depending on the size of the country and the DPI we are working on. These could actually have a wide range from almost $1 million to $10 million. And the rest of the equation, as I mentioned to you earlier, goes along the lines of the payment structure as I spoke.
Prakash Kapadia
Thanks. Thanks a lot Suresh, for the answers. I’ll join back the queue if I have more questions. Thank you.
Suresh Sethi
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Dhruv Shah from Dalal & Broacha. Please go ahead.
Dhruv Shah
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity sir. Sir, my question is regarding your identity services business. So if I look at your Slide Number 15, in terms of volume, except for eKYC, rest all the segments are seeing a growth in terms of volume. However, if we look at the revenue, there is a sharp dip of 25%. So — and this is the same case for full year as well. So on Slide Number 26 also, your full year volumes are increasing in most of the segments but the revenue is seeing a dip. So is there any pricing pressure in one of these segments or what is the scenario over there?
Suresh Sethi
Yeah. So Dhruv, thanks for the question. And you’re absolutely right, we have seen growth across all the leading business drivers. It means the number of eSigns or the number of eKYCs and so on. So while there has been growth overall, there has been, in certain cases, margin pressure because naturally, it’s at a foundational level. And over here, you are competing in a market where if you get large-scale commitments on volumes, it’s slab-based pricing. So at times, therefore, you find that the overall margin profile of the business might again become lower. And that’s what has been the reason for the decline in revenue. But in order to not just mitigate this, but also to vertically integrate the digital identity business, we have, therefore, moved into providing more value-added services.
Because at the base of the foundation of the identity business is the basic APIs for authentication for KYC, for eSign, but if you want to build complete workflow management systems of digital signing, digital stamping, that is where we are building the suite of services on top which also more value-added and, therefore, command their own differentiation because of how you build the consumer interfaces, the work for processes and so on. So that has been our strategy to, one, expand into a new line of business, which is more annuity-driven and like a SaaS sort of business and at the same time, mitigate some of the price compression that we see at the foundation level of the services.
Dhruv Shah
I understand that, sir, but do you see any green shoots of recovery in terms of prices or are these prices stabilizing or we will continue to — or you expect the price war to continue going forward as well?
Suresh Sethi
I think this will be a competitive space, Dhruv. It will definitely be a competitive space. Currently, in some of these areas, we are either a leading player as the — amongst the top four or five. And in areas like eSign, we have a 70% market share. So definitely, we differentiate based on the resilience of our offering because see ultimately, at the foundational level, you want resilience, you want complete uptime and all. That is what we differentiate with today. But yes, it’s at a level where it is, to an extent, commoditized, because when you look at value-added feature functionality, that is not there at the base of the pyramid when you look at the foundational DPIs. So we will continue to strengthen our technology stack, keep ensuring that we are ahead of the curve in the resilience and uptime of our services. And the trust that our Company’s name carries with both the private and the government sector entities, I think that is where we are at this stage.
Dhruv Shah
Right, sir. And my second question was regarding your other expenses. So there has been a sharp increase of over 100% in your other expenses. So on the interview on CNBC, you mentioned there is no one-off. So is this a steady state or will we see the similar trajectory as a percentage of sales going forward also for other expenses? And same question for processing charge as well. So processing charges is also down as a percentage of sales. It used to be around 40%. It’s now down to 36%, 36.5%. So will this continue going forward?
Suresh Sethi
Sure, Dhruv. I’ll just ask Sandeep to go into more details over here. Please, Sandeep.
Sandeep Mantri
Yeah. So Dhruv, to answer your second question on processing charges, this is going to be remained in the same range because we have implemented many automation projects last year, which has resulted into a significant saving in terms of delivering revenue, so therefore, the processing charges. And then second was we are delivering more and more online PAN. So that is also resulting into some savings. So all put together, I think processing charges will remain in these — at these levels only. To answer your second question on other expenses. There are — in this quarter — particularly in this quarter, there were certain expenses which were there because of the brand building exercise we carried out with Pankaj Tripathi. There is a significant spend on account of that.
And secondly, there was a accelerated amortization on some of the intangible assets we were building. And we thought if the cash flows are not in short term, so on a conservative side, we have decided to impair some of those intangibles, and therefore, there was a charge because of that. And the third one was RFP-related expenses, which are part of system support and maintenance expenses, which has also increased because of the — some of the RFP revenues we booked in this quarter. So primarily, these are few reasons. That is where we have seen increase in our other expenses. Other than that, there is — if you see in our tech cost, which is system support and maintenance, there is a slight increase from INR106 crores to INR122 crores on a yearly basis, which is primarily because of one, inflation, and second, we are building a strong tech resilient organization.
So there are inevitable cost because of that. And those are the reasons why some of those costs have gone up. Having said that, what will be our quarterly run rate? Some of those will be spread over a year. Some of those will be — will be only a thing of this time, but will come in some other form like depreciation also. So therefore, these are the rates for the quarter. So I hope this answers your question.
Dhruv Shah
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for the answer. I’ll join back the queue.
Sandeep Mantri
Thanks, Dhruv.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Rohan M with Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Rohan Mandora
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I wanted to understand if you can elaborate on the revenue opportunity from the DPI-in-a-Box that we’re talking about?
Suresh Sethi
Rohan, as I said, project-wise, we don’t give a breakup, but I tell you the structure of DPI-in-a-Box because — as you see, in India, we’ve built very large population scale DPIs, whether it was Aadhaar or UPI as a payment system or data exchange that we are doing, the consent management account, account aggregators, and now the DPDP Act. Now these are basic fundamental building blocks. Different countries are at different stage of their national or digital identity being there. Similarly, they want payment systems, they want agriculture system where they want to exchange agri data. So DPI-in-a-Box actually is a concept where we are saying if we can bring all these modular pieces together and do a quick deployment, rather than taking two years to three years to do it, if you can do the deployment in three months to four months using existing digital public goods and putting them together and deploying a solution in multiple sectors.
So that has been the approach which we have worked out and with various partners. This work has been done. Morocco became a first of its kind experiment to deploy a DPI-in-a-Box for enabling the education ecosystem. This is for teachers’ learning and assessment. So underlying that is what we are seeing the promise of this because as you deal with multiple countries with different needs and requirements, because one shoe fit all doesn’t work. DPI-in-a-Box becomes a good sort of flexible modular solutions where you’re able to build and deploy quickly at a POC basis and then create impact by scaling it up. So that is the underlying approach that we are taking. Project-wise, as I earlier mentioned to Prakash, most of the global businesses we are seeing, depending on the size, scale of the country, these projects are ranging from anywhere from $1 million to $10 million. I know it’s a huge range. But yeah, that is the sort of projects they are, and mostly there are in the line of RFPs because they are government-driven initiatives.
Rohan Mandora
Sure. And sir, on the CERSAI project, will you start booking revenues on that in FY ’26 and which quarter will that start from? And typically, in these RFP-linked projects, what kind of an EBITDA margins can we expect?
Sandeep Mantri
So to answer your first question, yes, CERSAI, the CKYCRR project, we will start booking revenue from this year. It will be in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, all the quarters, I guess. And margin information, I think we have talked in past also, we don’t diverge margin on a project level basis, but ballpark, I’m telling you ballpark basis, these are very high — I mean, a highly competitive market. So margin will be similar to what we deliver as of today.
Rohan Mandora
Sure, sir. And lastly, when we have been talking about on the PAN 2.0, that the distribution leg of business is not part of the current RFP. So if I refer to the notice or the tender that government has released in August ’24, it mentions that presently, the receipt verification, digitization of application, printing and dispatch of PAN cards and storage of physical as well as scanned PAN application are outsourced to PAN service providers. The PAN 2.0 project aims to consolidate end-to-end PAN servicing, starting from online receipt verification, deduping, processing allotment and things. So from this, I get a sense that the entire end-to-end process would be consolidated, but we have been indicating that this will be a separate part. So what gives us confidence like in saying that the distribution will be a separate activity?
Suresh Sethi
So Rohan, the confidence comes from the fact that India’s DPIs have already been deployed — always been deployed with the inclusive mind frame, right? When we got this mandate in 2003, the whole underlying idea was that every citizen should have the opportunity to be able to apply for a PAN card. That is exactly what the country did where Aadhaar enrollment centers were set up or when you talk about telecom and access to mobile services. So today, if we look at it, almost 70% of the people are applying for the PAN card through an assisted mode, which means they are going to an agent, they are submitting their KYC documentation.
Last year alone, I can share with you from our data, there were 16 types of IDs, which were presented by the applicants. Out of them, one was Aadhaar, right? Now when we look at PAN 2.0, you’re absolutely right. It’s consolidating or building, first of all, the tech stack, which today ITD runs. That tech stack will also have a portal on which you can directly apply for the PAN card. But the fact that today, the citizens of the country are taking assistance and applying, and 70% of the citizens are doing it, that is something — that service model will go completely by where the citizen is able to get the service. I will also further add to you that today, already there is direct application capability provided both by ITD and by the two other entities, which is Protean and UTI.
So the digital or opportunity to apply directly exists even as we speak today. But the choice of the citizen is clearly more tilted towards going through an assisted model. So that is the reason we are saying that these things don’t change overnight. We are talking about a very vast digital public infrastructure, and we are talking about the foundational ID. Tomorrow, you can’t have a scenario where you tell the citizens you no longer can apply if you don’t need help.
Rohan Mandora
Sure. Got it, sir. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from Ashish Pareek from Emkay Investment Managers Limited. Please go ahead.
Ashish Pareek
Yeah. Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. My first question is regarding the storage charges. So now how much of storage charges is been booked as a provision? So I mean how much amount is left from the ITD to be received? And secondly, if you can speak on the new business. So we want to push our mix to 25%. So what new business should we focus on? Or what shows the revenue to be 25% in the near future? Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri
So — yeah. So to answer your first question, Ashish, on the storage charges, we have no additional provision to be made because we have collected the money from department, and there is no future provisioning required as far as storage charges are concerned. On the second question of new business, I would request Suresh to put a light on some of those businesses like eSignPro and RISE with Protean.
Suresh Sethi
So Ashish, basically new businesses, as I mentioned, there is a strong focus on extending our foundational ID business, where we are building value-added services in the form of eSignPro and RISE with Protean, which we spoke about earlier, which is a multi-sector marketplace for APIs. And here, we are looking at a lot of focus in the BFSI sector for digital onboarding, lending, other services coming through being enabled with the stack. It will largely be a B2B annuity business. And a clear focus for us is because we see a strong adjacency because today, we are one of the leaders in the country at the foundational identity level. So same customers who are today using our stack for doing an eSign or an eKYC or an e-Authorization can benefit from the productization we’ve done on top of this stack. So that’s one core business for us. The other areas we are clearly getting into is in the space of open digital ecosystems. We have certain wins, as we called out, whether it is on the Agristack, the health.
ONDC is another area in which we participate strongly by actually powering the entire ONDC ecosystem and then also building the other aspects of it in the lines of demand and supply applications. RFP is another area where we are putting a lot of focus. You would have heard us talk about the recent wins we’ve had, and we continue to make sure that we have a very strong focused team, which is working on keeping a healthy RFP pipeline and working on large-scale turnkey projects. Other than that would be the international business, where we are — we’ve opened our, in a way, opened our account. And as I mentioned earlier, we’ve also set up our international subsidiary now, which was a means to say, let’s get more structure and focus around international operations. So we hope to keep on aggressively pursuing that business. And then there is the Cloud & Infosec business in which, again, we are making some headway. And these are the areas which we see and as we’ve been mentioning earlier, with the — our idea would be to diversify so that from a concentration on our core businesses on tax pension and identity, we have a more diversified portfolio, say, of 75:25, which should happen in the next couple of years.
Ashish Pareek
Okay, thank you. Sir, just a follow-up question on the storage charges. So my question was how much of money is left to be — I mean, to be received yet? And against that, how much of provision is already booked?
Sandeep Mantri
No. So right now, in books, we have collected whatever was supposed to be collected on account of storage charges. But still, we have a few years to be built to income tax which we’ll have to assess. And right now, we can’t disclose that number, but it is also a significant number.
Ashish Pareek
Okay. Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri
Right now, nothing is there in the books, which is to be yet to be collected. We have collected everything. No further provisioning, no outstanding as far as the position today as of today concern. But we’ll bill for a few years in the time to come, in the quarter to come.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from Darshil Pandya with Finterest Capital. Please go ahead.
Darshil Pandya
Hello? I’m audible, sir.
Sandeep Mantri
Yeah.
Darshil Pandya
Sir, just one question from my side. So just wanted to understand if you can clarify whether the nature of the services with regards to PAN 2.0, sir, post project completion, would it be like same as what our business is currently? Or is this — this will be managed exclusively by the agency that will be awarded this contract?
Suresh Sethi
Darshil, as I mentioned earlier, these are two separate mandates, right? We had a mandate in 2003 which we continue to service and we’ll continue to service going forward as we speak, and which is where we are given the task of processing and issuance of the PAN card.
Darshil Pandya
So this will continue as usual?
Suresh Sethi
I mean, as we speak, there is no change to that because PAN 2.0 does not cover this mandate. It’s a separate mandate completely, right? And the PAN 2.0, as I said, is a tech revamp of the core IT system, which we were never managing before also. It was always managed by ITD.
Darshil Pandya
Okay.
Operator
Darshil, does that answer your question?
Suresh Sethi
Or you want me to add anything more?
Darshil Pandya
No. So sir, just wanted to understand, since this was around INR1,400 crores of orders that we were expecting, and since we are not getting it, so I’m still not able to understand how is it going to affect us because looking at what market conditions are there right now with regards to our stock, what is something that is being discounted?
Suresh Sethi
So Darshil, that’s why I’m saying that there was naturally ambiguity because it’s PAN 2.0 and there was the understanding that it’s the same mandate now getting a different shape. So even when we applied for it, it was going to be incremental business for us, like we apply for other RFPs. The mandate we have from ITD continues. I mean, we have that mandate still with us, and that does not change.
Darshil Pandya
Okay. And we will have more clarity once we get some clarity from the income tax department with regards to this RFP selection…
Suresh Sethi
On the RFP, as we mentioned, we have written to the department to seek more clarification. As you know, there is a prequalification stage, there’s qualification and then price discovery. You’ve seen the results on the GeM/CPP portal. So at the qualification stage two is have been given not the approval to go ahead, and one entity has made it to the pricing discovery stage. So we have requested the IT department to give us a clarification behind what went into the decision. So that is where we are currently.
Darshil Pandya
Okay, got it. Will wait for your clarification, sir. Thank you so much.
Suresh Sethi
Sure. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pratham Kankariya from Quantum AMC Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Pratham Kankariya
Hello? Hi, good afternoon or good evening, sir. Am I audible?
Suresh Sethi
Pratham, your voice is very muted. If you can come closer to the mic?
Pratham Kankariya
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this good now?
Sandeep Mantri
Yeah.
Pratham Kankariya
Just like to follow up on the participant report. You explained that for the PAN, most of the new PAN card issuance happen like via assisted mode where at least 16 documents are required. But as far as I could remember, when I got my PAN, it was just a Aadhaar and that I had to use them from OTP for verification. And we have seen how people have adopted to the UPI and we can’t bank on people trying to go for assisted mode to go for the PAN. So how do you see this situation going ahead?
Suresh Sethi
Pratham, again I’m saying this is more data as we have it today, right? Aadhaar has been around for some time. And today, definitely, people use Aadhaar. But even within Aadhaar, people are actually going to the agent to, for example, do their biometric, right? When you have to use your thumb print to do your KYC, you’re doing it at an agent point. Similarly, there’s an assisted mode using OTP, that is again at an agent point. So a lot of Aadhaar-enabled KYC today also is being done through an agent. It is not that people are doing it themselves. So I’m just sharing with you the factual data on the ground. Aadhaar is as we know, 99% penetration. And so people whoever are using Aadhaar, we again see a dominant split over there also still taking the support of an agent to be able to do the application.
Pratham Kankariya
But just one thing that for future PAN that what we are banking on that people will still go for the assisted mode. So just need some clarity on that thing.
Suresh Sethi
So, Pratham I am adding two parts to it. Let me say, we have a national distribution network where we provide PAN as one service. Other than that, we have a host of other services, multi-products running on the same distribution. So PAN is one line of business for us. As I earlier also said, if people’s preferences start moving to different areas, there will be still more and enough opportunity to build other lines of business to the distribution. We have clearly seen large-scale distribution models working very well in the country with new opportunities coming.
As you are aware, in this budget, it was announced that we will be issuing 6 crore Go Aadhaar’s IDs to farmers or the farmer ID, right? That again needs a distribution on the ground to enroll the farmer and give them a Go Aadhaar card. So these are areas in which we are expanding and looking at other areas in the DPI space where the same distribution can be purpose to provide other opportunities. So all I’m saying at this stage is that naturally, there has been, first of all, a very strong or a close association of PAN 2.0 with the mandate we have, whereas, very clearly, these are two separate mandates. The propensity of the citizens to move from an assisted mode to doing things directly, it’s always there, with or without PAN 2.0, let me put it that way. How does PAN 2.0 change it? Today, you already have direct to — direct for issuance channels. ITD department has their own website. UTI has their website. Protean has their website. There are three websites today, right, where you can apply it directly. So our business risk anywhere does not increase with PAN 2.0.
Pratham Kankariya
Okay. [Foreign Speech] Thanks. Just another question. So on ONDC, so there were newspaper reports that ONDC transactions have not picked up. And even some of the vendors in Bangalore, particularly the restaurant chain owners that they are moving out of ONDC ecosystem because of the lack of interoperability. And the website is generally not user-friendly that I — even I have — I myself have checked that. So just would like your opinion on this, is that…
Suresh Sethi
Okay, Pratham, first of all, let me confirm to you, and we’ve seen the numbers. ONDC numbers are growing, right? Because quarter-on-quarter, there has been growth. The ecosystem is building up. There will always be cases which will come forth. Somebody has not had an experience and they’ve taken a decision and it gets picked up. But primarily, the ecosystem at large is growing. Secondly, if you see, ONDC is a network, it’s a protocol. It’s something sitting between buyers and sellers. So there are demand side applications. There are supply side applications, which means the application you and I would go to place an order, and then there’s — on the other side, there is the sell-side application that the merchants are enrolled so that they can fulfill the order.
Now ONDC itself does not run an application to meet demand supply. They have recently come out with their old ONDC app, which is a very smart interface, as I have seen it at least. So that is my comment, but definitely, you can try it out and see how you feel about it. But otherwise, ONDC in itself is not a web application. It’s a protocol or a network on which multiple apps plug in, and the demand and supply side and the logistics sides get unbundled over there. But ONDC otherwise is showing growth, and there is a lot of focus on identified categories now where the team is going with renewed vigor to make sure that we are succeeding and going deep in certain categories like grocery, like quick commerce and all. So these are areas we are focusing on over there.
Pratham Kankariya
Yeah. But just one thing that when I tried the website myself, it has not been user-friendly. I will surely check that out once again, I’ll get back to you. Thank you.
Sandeep Mantri
Sure.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kamlesh Bagmar from Lotus Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Kamlesh Bagmar
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, if I see, like, say, over the years, like we have been conveying that we are investing in the new businesses. But if I see last six years, like our revenues has grown at 1.8% CAGR. And if I see your EBITDA, like say it has fallen from INR180 crores odd to currently INR80 crores odd. So like how the new businesses are going to pan out? Because as you were highlighting earlier, and it is there in your presentation as well, like the eSign or all those like say, identity services, where we are seeing significant pressure on the realization side, like a 20% odd, 28% odd fall in the revenue. So like we are like highlighting that new businesses are going to emerge, but there also, they are becoming much and more commoditized. So in terms of margins, how we are going to place going forward? So because the margins have fallen from 20% odd to 10% levels. So just wanted to have your view on that.
Suresh Sethi
Sure. So Kamlesh, let me pick it up on one or two different ways of looking at this. One is the fact that margins have come down, we’ve ourselves been saying that we have been investing to support the growth of new areas of business. And a lot of this investment, we’ve called out earlier, was also into tech and people. We built our own development centers. We’ve built our own team of engineers who specialize in open source technology and who also specialize in building centers of excellence around emerging technologies. Now that is one part where there’s investment which has gone into it, and we’ve been calling it out that last three years, four years have been areas of investment into people and tech.
When I look at it, where are we currently? I know that at this stage, the new businesses are contributing still at a very peripheral level. But as I started, when I started this conversation, we’ve had some outcomes which have been clearly driven by this investment in people and tech, are two or three RFPs that we’ve won, which are big ones, and you heard subsequent questions to Sandeep also, which will start contributing this revenues this year because these are both the first revenue coming at the point of deployment and then annuity revenue. So that will increase the overall revenue profile for the Company, and we expect this money to come in this year. So we will see a clear contribution from the RFP businesses this year.
The second area, which, again, we are happy to report and share with confidence. We’ve been able to open our business in international markets. Earlier, we were definitely for quite a few quarters, I remember saying that we are engaged with multiple countries. We are now seeing actual implementations and award mandates coming to us. And we hope that this year, we will follow it up with some more coming in because once you’ve started then, clearly, the referenceability is there in building it. The products like eSignPro and RISE with Protean which we, in a way, launched last year. So there is a time to sort of build the market and engage with the customers. We know for us, we also call us an adjacency because for us, it’s an up-sell and a cross-sell because a lot of these customers we already have as our eSign or eSignPro — I mean eSign or eKYC or e-Authentication customers. We go back to the same customer and tell them that we can now provide you an enhanced digital suite.
So where I’m coming to is that while tech investment to a large state is done and it can never end, but the bulk of it, what we wanted to do, we have developed. Also from the products that we were to develop. We see this year some early shoots clearly. The businesses we’ve won under RFP, the businesses we’ve won internationally and the products which are out there now since last year, there are healthy pipelines and good engagements, we should clearly see them contributing this year. And while the old businesses have not lost any of their edge, it was the incremental investment into new businesses, which was having a compression on the margins. So with the new businesses coming in and contributing at the revenue level, we would expect the margin profile to improve.
Kamlesh Bagmar
And lastly, like a lot has been grilled on that particular part, that PAN 2.0, apologies for, again, grilling you. So if I read the 24 [Phonetic] November 2024 press release of government, it is clearly articulated that they are going for direct delivery model. So why can’t government replicate what they have done in the case of passport services through TCS? Why can’t it be replicated here as well? And though we are asking that it’s not different that like normal traditional channels will always be there, but when government is taking such a strict action or like say, so much confidence and they are articulating in the press release, clearly saying that it will be a direct delivery model. And so how — from where we are getting that confidence that there is no change in the moderate certainty on this particular PAN 2.0?
Suresh Sethi
So let me, Kamlesh, answer that again. You rightly said we’ve been grilled enough on this. See, first of all, our mandate has not changed, right? So I’ll start from there. We had a certain mandate from the department. The mandate has not changed, and there has been no indication to us to say, [Foreign Speech] X, Y, Z time, [Foreign Speech]. So this is a mandate we have with us today, which means we are running a system for processing and issuance of PAN cards. The second point I would like to make is, today also, there are direct channels, and we see the propensity of the citizens and we’ve spoken percentages, that is there. So down the line as things change, whether PAN 2.0 happens or doesn’t happen, the direct-to-consumer is always there.
So the risk of our business or what we are doing today was anywhere there, whether PAN 2.0 happens or not because the direct model is there. Now I come to the question of you taking the analogy of PAN centers — Passport Seva Kendra. Passport Seva Kendra is exactly the assisted model. In the morning, somebody said, that’s a good analogy. TCS is running assisted service centers. The government is not saying [Foreign Speech]. That is what we are talking about with PAN card where we are doing the direct-to-consumer, which means I go on the website, I submit my KYC details, and the PAN card will come to my house. Passport Seva Kendra doesn’t work like that. You go to TCS and you do a lot of assisted work till you reach a point where you submit your entire data and then the passport is issued and the passport is again distributed by TCS as a service provider. [Foreign Speech] example is very much along the lines in what we do today for PAN.
Kamlesh Bagmar
Okay. Great, sir. And best of luck, sir. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Sandeep Mantri
Thank you.
Suresh Sethi
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shreyas Pimple with JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Shreyas Pimple
Hello, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I just wanted to ask, has there been any precedence that the RFP has been rejected or not selected in the first round? And then the government has given the mandate after giving — rectifying whatever the concerns that the government had. So has there been any precedence like that?
Suresh Sethi
Shreyas, it will be difficult to comment. But naturally, as part of a defined general financial rules, there’s the way bids are handled by the Government of India. And it clearly provides for a complete transparency in which the way the bids are evaluated. And naturally, there is a requirement to make sure that all the bidders have satisfactory answers as to why they were or not able to qualify at a certain stage. So there are clear rules and regulations around it but difficult for me to call out a precedent, there may or may not be, I’m not aware about it.
Shreyas Pimple
Sure, sir. Thank you. And the second question was on growth. Is there any number that you’re looking at? You said that you are investing on new businesses this year. But what is the growth target — tentative target that you’re looking at for, let’s say, next two years?
Sandeep Mantri
So we have deliberated in past as well. What we are saying, again, we are reiterating again. One, we do not give any guidance, but as a general rule, what we are saying is basically our core businesses, which are the pension, PAN and foundational identity businesses, will grow somewhere between 8% to 12%, and our new businesses will contribute 25% to 30% in the next three years. That’s the guidance we normally give to market. Other than that, we don’t give specific guidance on how next year or next two years will pan out. But you can definitely calculate back of the envelope basing this thesis.
Shreyas Pimple
Sure, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. That’s it from me.
Sandeep Mantri
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vishal Mehta from Oaklane Capital. Please go ahead.
Vishal Mehta
Hello, sir, I just had two questions. In the PAN business, we’ve shared that our market share is growing. But in that case, why are the revenues declining in that segment?
Sandeep Mantri
Our market share is growing, but the whole market last year, because of prior to that year, there was one time Aadhaar, PAN linkage event. Because of that, there were upsurge in the PAN issuance. And this year, there was no significant event like that. Therefore, — and then the election was also there in Q1 of the year. So therefore, this year was — in terms of PAN issuance market, this year has shrunk compared to last year, while we have grown in our market share from — by 500 basis points.
Vishal Mehta
Okay. And sir, the other question was regarding the new businesses. So on a quarterly basis, Q4, we’ve seen a 100% growth in the new businesses and accounts for around 7% of our total sales. But is there any one-off in this or there is a structural change where the new businesses like the ONDC innovation layer and all these things that are growing?
Sandeep Mantri
I would not say this is a one-off type of growth. We will see consistently these new businesses growing in next quarters.
Vishal Mehta
So this INR15 [Phonetic] crore plus level is what will be maintained for the new business. Is it?
Sandeep Mantri
I guess so. Yeah.
Vishal Mehta
Okay, sir, great. Thank you so much. All the best.
Suresh Sethi
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as a last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Suresh Sethi for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Suresh Sethi
Thank you. I would like to thank everybody, all our shareholders and all the people on the call who’ve been following us so closely for your continued support, trust in the Company. As always, we remain committed to building India’s digital public infrastructure and also taking the India stack to global markets. Thank you very much.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]