Tanla Platforms Limited (NSE: TANLA) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Jan. 23, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Ritu Mehta — Director of Investor Relations
Deepak Goyal — Executive Director and Chief Business Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Tanla Platforms Limited Q3FY26 earnings conference call. 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 an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ritu Mehta. Thank you. And over to you, ma’.
Ritu Mehta — Director of Investor Relations
Am. A very good afternoon and a warm welcome to our Q3 earnings call. Joining with us today are Uday Reddy, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Deepak Goel, Executive Director, Anupav Batra, cfo, and Anuradha Chawa, GC and Company Secretary. Before we start the call, let me draw your attention to the fact that today’s discussion may feature statements that are forward looking in nature. All statements other than the statements of historical fact could be deemed forward looking in nature. Such statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be quantified or predicted. A detailed disclosure in this regard is mentioned in the results presentation that is uploaded on our website.
Audio recording and transcript will be available soon. Hope everybody got a chance to go through our presentation and the shareholder letter. The management will be happy to answer any questions and we will now open the floor for Q and A. Michelle, if you could open the floor for Q and A.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Sure, ma’. Am. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may please press Star and one on the touchtone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. You may please press Star and one to ask questions. The first question is from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities.
Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks for the opportunity. So my first question is on the Enterprise side. Obviously we have seen the recovery there in terms of growth both in the OTT side and the enterprise excluding the ott. If you can throw some more color in terms of whether this is more led by seasonality or this is led by some structural changes that are happening in the enterprise business exo ott. Because last quarter you mentioned that there was some impact from some client specific drawdowns. So like where are we in terms of the stability of the existing portfolio and also in terms of the domestic messaging volume, how the volume has ticked up and how the telcos are seeing for price hike in this segment.
Ritu Mehta
Deepak, do you want to take this one?
Deepak Goyal
Yeah, sure, sure. There. Hi, Amit, Deepak here. So overall we have seen a good quarter, you know, as reflected in the numbers. And it is not just about seasonality but over. I would say that we did pretty well. If you look at the volumes on the SMS side, our volumes are growing. Our customers, we have in fact winning a lot of new customers and we have added net new customers to our portfolio and those customers have ramped up. We are also seeing, we have been trying to change a mix a little bit. We focus on more profitable routes.
We focused on customers sending messages to outside of India and we grown that that has also brought in some additional profitability on the OTT side. You must be aware as we speak today, we have been recognized by Meta as the partner of the year. So we are their most preferred partners now though we had, you know, as we discussed in the last earnings call, you know, there was a bit of a, you know, you know, incentives or withdrawn by Meta. But still, you know, overall this business is growing and we are also, you know, trying to add, you know, charge for our additional services for bots and everything.
So, so that is also giving us, you know, you know, additional revenues and bottom line, which is contributing to the bottom line. And you know, we feel that this is going to sustain for the next, you know, for the future also.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, you mentioned about obviously the WhatsApp OTT business, the volume growth is back, but more from an Meta perspective, they have been very volatile in terms of pricing. First they have cut the pricing. Now again there has been a pricing increase. So how do the enterprise clients view this? And also is it any price hike there is going to impact the adoption of WhatsApp as a alternative channel or you’re seeing very strong demand there in terms of adoption or also in terms of pricing, why there is so much volatility from the Meta side.
Ritu Mehta
See, Meta is known for this. You know, when they see the strong demand, they, they would, you know, increase the prices. Okay, so there’s nothing new that is, that is happening on the ad business also. And that is happening here as well. Having said that, I would say that, you know, customers continue to, you know, ride on this channel as they see great ROI coming in. But we would also say that, you know, we also have an alternate channel that is RCS available for the customers and they are trying, you know, that as well, which is far, far cheaper.
And even there the ROI is pretty good. So if certain customers, you know, they find then we, then we have, you know, rival channel available with us even at RCS as you are where we are the largest. So, so it is working well. But just to, you know, but just to answer to your question, yes, you know, the demand remains, you know, quite strong for WhatsApp.
Unidentified Participant
Anon, you mentioned about that you have been adding new customers and we have seen that the new customer addition has been pretty strong over the last two quarters. But if I see the revenue added from these customers, there has been a sharp decline in terms of what we have added in this quarter. So is it, if you can explain how the journey of a new client is and what actually defines a new client in terms of whether we start at a very low engagement level and then we ramp up within that and how much typically is the ramp up timeline in terms of when we onboard a client.
Ritu Mehta
For a customer to fully ramp up? You know, it takes good three, four quarters once we, once we onboard a customer. I also mentioned, you know, a couple of quarters back that we are focusing on our existing customers also to increase our market, our wallet share where we are already present. So that that exercise also worked very well for us. And in parallel we were, we were, you know, working on adding new customers as well, which we did. And you would see the results in the coming quarters, you know, you know, because as I said, it takes time to, you know, to build all the solutions and, and everything and you know, and, and ram the customer.
You know, we have to work on a lot of use cases so that that work is going on in parallel. But I can, I can tell you that, you know, our engine is going, you know, pretty well on both the sides on the existing customer sides where we are continuously working on increasing our wallet share. And we are also working on adding, you know, absolutely net new customer which were never there with us.
Unidentified Participant
And so lastly, last question from my side is on the platform side, obviously no, we have a stated strategy there in terms of scaling the platform business. But are we satisfied with our performance in terms of what we have achieved in terms of platform business? Because the growth has slowed down versus what we have done maybe one or two years back. And in terms of the new platform launches outside of India, we have onboarded some new customers. So what is the ramp up timelines there and when we can see some strong growth in the platform?
Ritu Mehta
Yeah, so Amit, it’s a good question. In fact, we have one, one deal on, on our JTP in India. So we’re going to go live anytime soon. So we should able to start building probably if not January, probably in February itself like so that’s one bank that we added on ATP to start with. Secondly, we have delivered fantastic. We have delivered the impact to our Indosat customer and they are pretty happy. So we are also in discussion with other telcos. But as you know Latent is a gigantic platform. It takes a bit of time to sell this platform but once you deploy like you know, it’s tightly integrated with the network, handset and sim.
So it takes a bit of time. But we are doing whatever we can do from outside to sell more of platforms in international market.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And in terms of launches, are we there in terms of whatever launches we have to make on the platform side or we are still working on some new products, some new innovative product like when? Because we are always ahead in terms of understanding the industry trend and coming up with some innovative product. And that has been our strength on the platform side. So anything if you can share with us in terms of what we are working on and what can be the future growth drivers on the platform business.
Ritu Mehta
Amit, I am afraid I cannot really tell you what are the platforms that we are working right now. But definitely you get to hear something good. In this quarter our innovation engine along with GTM engine is going very, very good. Solid. But our innovation team is working on a platform and which has to go live by end of this quarter. And as and when we go live with both telcos and enterprises, we should able to update our shareholders.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you Udaisa. And all the best for the quarter. Thank you.
Ritu Mehta
Thanks Amit.
Deepak Goyal
Thanks.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take the next question from the line of Deepak Chokhani from REIT Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. Good evening sir, Deepak Chokhani here. So quick, two questions. With a strong bank balance of 1000 crore, do you think our existing businesses has enough time for us to continue growing or should we be considering investing or incubating other businesses in which are related to our business? That’s question number one and question number two is, you know, we haven’t seen any domestic mutual fund participation in our shareholders list. So what efforts companies making to attract them? That’s it. Thank you.
Ritu Mehta
Hi Deepak. So we have a strong balance sheet. We have good cash balance and honestly our efforts are more to do with addressing the existing TAM currently because it is growing at a decent pace. Likewise there are certain products that we have which are category creators in themselves. So there we are not limited to the current CPAs TAM. But like YT, AI has geographical attraction. So we would want to continue to invest our energies in the near term in accelerating the growth on the existing platform that we have built. Not just in India but to go global.
That is one. But having said that, we continue to invest. Like I mentioned, we are working on new platform so we want to expand our TAM with the innovation engine that we have and cater to greenfield opportunities. So we do spend decent amount of, you know, funds from our funds to. For the. On the new, new innovations that we’re doing internally. That is one. And.
Unidentified Participant
So on the same point, you think, you think we have enough, the enterprise and the platform business has enough time for us to continue grow in the near future. It seems like things have kind of saturated in terms of, you know, the market or the top line. And not only for us, just for the entire sector.
Ritu Mehta
Deepak, it is not saturated. It is actually growing at almost 8 to 12% range year on year. And with OTT changing the landscape, honestly, the market is expanding in that sense. Digital adoption is going through the roof, UPI transactions, etc. So there is enough market opportunity there. But at the same time, having said that, you know that we have geographical expansion aspirations so we would want to expand our geographical territory so that we are able to increase address to a larger tab.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, and the next question was basically, I mean are we, are we making any efforts to attract any. Because given the mutual, at least the domestic mutual fund flow has been so huge and I sometimes wonder why. What efforts are we making to attract them?
Ritu Mehta
Yeah, so Amit, so sorry Deepak, there. I think what we are trying to do currently is obviously we need to engage more. So we are going to increase our coverage. We want to increase meetings with the set of investors in the near future. But obviously our first endeavor was to make sure that we get back on the growth trajectory which I think we have started demonstrating quarter on quarter improvements in the number. And once now that the growth momentum is back, we obviously have taken a note of this internally. Also we have discussed that as management we would want to go out and engage with both the domestic funds as well as, you know, foreign institution investors.
So we are going to focus on that aspect as well.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you and all the best.
Ritu Mehta
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take the next question from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital. Please go ahead. Go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. As you explained a lot of things on the industry side but wanted to understand like how competition is Evolving in India in the CPAS market is and especially from a global CPAS player and telco pack platform. And another question on the OTT and RCS that are gaining traction. So how should we think about the growth trajectory going forward two to three years?
Ritu Mehta
You want to take this, this question.
Deepak Goyal
Hi, I couldn’t hear it probably can you please repeat?
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, so wanted to understand on the competition side CPAS market especially from global CPAS player and telco backed platform and another question on the OTT and RCS gaining traction so how we should think the growth trajectory in additional SMS versus a newer channel over the next two to three years.
Ritu Mehta
Deepak is there. Deepak there?
operator
Yes sir. He’s connected. He is connected. Yeah. Deepak sir, please unmute yourself and speak.
Deepak Goyal
We are seeing good amount of you know, growth coming in on the SMS side also as Anubhav just mentioned that the UPI transaction going through the roof. So these all attract you know, kind of transactions, SMS based notifications and OTPs and so on and you know, and likewise you know if you look at OTT now the focus is not only on the top 200 or 300 and large enterprise customers who you know, who are into B2C business. The tab is increasing to SMEs damaging and there are hundreds and thousands of SMEs are there and now the focus by the, you know, by you know, OTT players is how we can, you know, build solutions for them.
Right. So and that market can be really, really huge and that’s where we are. We are giving by putting a lot of focus on you know, whether it’s you know, voice or you know, otherwise you know, so, so a lot of work is going on that. So so both SMS and OTT are, are going to grow in the future. And and I think your another question was that about the competition from the, you know, from the international player. Am I right?
Unidentified Participant
Yes sir.
Ritu Mehta
Yeah. So I mean if you really see Indian market is quite complex and you know almost every large CPAS player had their presence in India or they still have it. Let’s say for example Twilio came and Twilio bought value first and finally and ultimately you know, you know we acquired value first and now they’re with us. Singh is there but they’re not doing that great info. BIP is almost on the verge of you know, collapsing in India. So. Yeah. So you know if you really look at the international players they, they don’t much presence left in India anymore which we, which we predicted you know three years Back as well.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you sir. And also wanted to understand like currently our annualized revenue on the customer cohort grew around 34 cent approx. So how much headroom remain for wallet share expansion within the top 20 and 30 customers bracket?
Ritu Mehta
See there is, there is still room. Okay. And we feel that we have, you know, quite. I mean I can’t quantify in the percentage right now but there is, there is still room left and there is a work in progress for that.
Deepak Goyal
And also Jyoti, just to add to what Deepak said, basically we are trying to focus on accounts basis. The volunteer that we have customer cohort but also customers which are between 20 to 50 million per month kind of number that we generate from them. We are targeting to focus on the lower end of pyramid as well so that we bring them on the higher level on the pyramid. So we would want to focus on those segments as well. So that’s why I think overall there is still a lot of headroom available for growth by focusing on, by increasing the wallet share on the other segments as well from the cohort.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you so much sir.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may please press star and one to ask questions at this time. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Chauhan from Eklavya Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you and congratulations for a good set of numbers. What I see from the presentation is that your enterprise communication finally is going at double digit rate. Y O Y project from your previous conferences. What I gather is it is because the pricing situation has become much better. So my question is do we see the pricing pressure in enterprise communication to remain stable and the market share to remain stable or can they turn volatile again?
Ritu Mehta
Abhishek, in the near future we would want to assume that there will be stability. However, having said that, competition environment is still active and there is continuous pricing pressure that remains. However, both from a sourcing side as well as from the selling price side, we have been able to maintain this thing and our growth is also increasing. So in the near term it is stable. But because we operate in a highly competitive environment, long term view is difficult but near term is stable.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. I think that’s all from my time.
operator
Thank you. Participants, you may please press star and want to ask questions. The next question is from the line of Dharvi Sharma from Mudita Growth Partners. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity. So I have an industry wise question. So globally we are seeing that banks and especially financial institutions, they are moving from OTPs to pass through also to place their partis. I want to understand what are the your views on it. Do we see SMS OTP value volumes going down in the future? I want to have some understanding as to how does it impact our terminal value. In your opinion.
Ritu Mehta
Deepak, would you want to answer that? Can you please repeat the question.
Unidentified Participant
Sir? So my question is, I’ve been reading on a globally bank and financial institution.
operator
Sorry to interrupt you here Dharvi. Can you please use your handset because your audio is not clear. Ma’.
Unidentified Participant
Am. Yes, hello. Am I audible now?
operator
Yes ma’. Am. Ma’, am, I would request you to please use your handset and keep it little bit far from your mic so that we can understand what you’re thinking. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, so my question is that globally we are seeing that banks and especially financial institutions we are moving from OTPs to Partis also. Two factor authentication is being replaced by Partc. So in the opinion the SMS volumes of OTP should decrease in the future. So what are your views on it? I want to have some understanding as to how this decrease in volume if it happens, how does it impact our terminal value? So if I could get some views on it from your end.
Ritu Mehta
So Dharvil, while brands are using, you know, new ways of authenticating a user. But at the same time I think OTP continues to grow and remains most secured channel. So we don’t, we have not seen any drop decrease in the volumes in OTP even when the new technologies are being made available. And also I think even if, let’s say the OTP use case shifts from sms there are many more use cases that are being, you know, growing in the market. Like we mentioned, notifications is going through the roof because of the transactions that happen on digital channels.
So we don’t see, you know, any impact on OTP traffic, you know, in the, in the near future.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. Participants, you may please press star and one to ask questions. The next question is from the line of Rahil Shah from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Good afternoon sir, can you hear me?
operator
Yes sir. Please proceed.
Unidentified Participant
Do we have any, firstly any guidance when it comes to our top line and margins? Mainly on the margins front. Now you’ve done well in this quarter. So what is the steady state range? First of all one can expect.
Ritu Mehta
Raheel, we would not want to give any guidance on any number. Sorry because it’s forward looking. But as we said we are aspiring to continue to build on our growth momentum and I think it should continue.
Unidentified Participant
And I Mean equal focus across all the platforms and channels we have or is there a certain area where the company is, you know, spending more to get more market share?
Ritu Mehta
On both, we’re focusing on both segments and you would see that on both of them we are growing continuously. So focus is there on both, both the segments.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you, sir.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gopinath, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi, good evening everyone. Can you hear me?
operator
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, so I have three questions. The first one is on the Value First International Business Acquisition. I know the approvals haven’t come through and it’s hard to exactly know when the timeline would be. But do we know why the approvals are taking so long to happen? Right. For the question to go through. That’s question number one. And it was also mentioned that some 40,000, 40 crores RSS are being amortized under the employee expenses. I wanted to understand how much of it has been amortized this quarter and how long will that process happen. And the third question is, I mean, I’m not sure if I have this information right, but NIC National Informatics center was a customer of Scarix.
I believe that, you know, the SMS to government organizations has gone to some other firm. How much of an impact would that have on the bottom line and the top line starting next quarter?
Ritu Mehta
Yeah, first question. Hello, Babinath. Let me just answer the question regarding regulatory approvals for the Value First International. Like you said, you know, it is pending, but we cannot tell you the timelines because regulatory approvals are approvals and we are constantly in touch with the regulator. We are trying to resolve it and we will update the market as and when we have an update from the regulator. Having said so, we just want to inform. Yeah, please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Sorry. In time. When I understand. But do we know, do we understand the reasons why it’s taking a lot of time.
Ritu Mehta
You know, why it’s taking a lot of time? There are some questions and we’re just responding to the questions from the regulator. Okay.
Unidentified Participant
Okay.
Ritu Mehta
Yeah. On the Deepak, you want to take on nic?
Deepak Goyal
Yeah, yeah. For nic, sir, it’s like this, that firstly when you talk about what will be the impact of, you know, the top line, bottom line, then impact is in terms of bottom line. The impact is not material, number one. Number two, I would say that, you know, when Nic, you know, floated this rfp, they came up with a very stringent eligibility criteria which requires a lot of different kind of, you know, certifications. And.
Ritu Mehta
So Deepakar Is here. Okay, so what is it?
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, yeah, there. He’s there, sir. Yeah.
Ritu Mehta
In the meanwhile, let me answer the second question around VFR issues. The best thing is over two years and this is the third quarter of. Of that vesting.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. Roughly five. Five crores quarter.
Ritu Mehta
Yes, yes. So. So. Deepak, are you there?
Deepak Goyal
Hi, Uday, can you. Am I audible?
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, it’s audible. Yeah. You are talking about Mic. You’re talking to nic.
Deepak Goyal
Yeah, yeah, so I was talking about Nic. So, firstly, I would say that, you know, you asked for how. What would be the impact on our top line and bottom line. So I would say the impact is not material. It’s not much if we really, you know, lose it. But just to give you more details about it, when NIC floated the rfp, they came up with a very strict eligibility criteria, which requires a lot of different kind of experience and certification, security audits, a lot of stuff. And what we have. What we have found is that there are serious anomalies, you know, with the.
You know, with who. I mean, to whom this tender has been awarded. And we have raised this with the. With nic, and we are waiting for our favorable response from their side. So it is not yet over as far as we are concerned.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, got it. And another thing to add. Great job on the Tamil Nadu Governance Agency product launch that you had any idea on how the volumes and when the volumes might pick up? Or is it like, how do we make money out of it? Is it again, per message basis there or how is that contract going to work out?
Deepak Goyal
Yeah, we always work on per transaction basis. And, you know, this is our focus on going on to each and every state in the country and, you know, enable them to be able to communicate and interact and engage with the citizens over there. So let’s say, for example, Tamil Nadu is a very, very interesting project. You know, we have already worked for more than three months to activate our bots for more than 55 various government departments in Tamil Nadu. They are very, very happy with it. And. And it has. The service has been launched. It will take some time to ramp up where citizens would understand that, you know, they can reach out to a particular number to ask for, you know, you know, various things from the government.
They can, in fact, interact with the government department directly and vice versa. Where if there are any government schemes, are there any new developments, are there, they can reach out to the citizens. So this has been built for that. And we believe, we are working very closely with them and we believe that it will bring very good volumes for us in the near future. But I cannot say in terms of what revenues and all that, but we feel it’s going to be pretty good work.
Unidentified Participant
Are there any projects underlying going on with other governments similar to that of coming?
Deepak Goyal
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have, we have. We have many more, you know, states in the pipeline, you know, with us, because each and every state want to go for it. And we are, you know.
operator
Excuse me, sir. Sir, you’re not audible. Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, yeah. So I was saying that, yeah, we are working with, you know, various other states as well.
Deepak Goyal
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the update. This is like, hoping for the best. Thank you.
Ritu Mehta
And just to tell you one more thing, we are, you know, with Nic, we are very strong on WhatsApp, our, you know, company value first. They are the primary providers for WhatsApp services over there. And that is growing very well over there.
operator
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ritu Mehta for closing comments. Thank you. And over to you, ma’.
Ritu Mehta
Am. Thank you, everybody. In case any questions remain unanswered, please write to investor help desk.
Deepak Goyal
Thank you.
operator
Thank you, ma’. Am. Thank you. Members of the management, on behalf of Tanla Platforms limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you. It.