Tbo Tek Ltd (NSE: TBOTEK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 22, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Gaurav Bhatnagar — Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director
Ankush Nijhawan — Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director
Vikas Jain — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Karan Uppal — Analyst
Manik Taneja — Analyst
Swapnil Potdukhe — Analyst
Moez Chandani — Analyst
Mohit Motwani — Analyst
Prateek Kumar — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
[Start Abruptly] Foreign we have with us from the management Mr. Ankush Najawan, Co Founder and Joint Managing Director Mr. Gaurav Patnagar, Co Founder and Joint Managing Director Mister Akshay Varma, Whole Time Director and Chief Technology Officer Mr. Vikas Jain, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Anil Pereira, President Strategy and Mr. Rajiv Kumar, Head Investor Relationship.
We will begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management followed by a Q and a session. Please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward looking in nature. Such forward looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or projections to differ materially from those statements. TBO Tech will not be in any way responsible for any actions taken based on such statements and undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward looking statements.
I would like to now hand over the call to Mr. Gaurav Patnagar for his opening remarks. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Gaurav Bhatnagar — Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director
Thank you Ashvi. Good evening everyone and thanks for joining our earnings call. We have taken feedback from a lot of you from over the last few months and structured the today’s presentation slightly differently. So we’ll of course run through our results for the quarter and for the full year and then we’ll spend a little bit time giving more color on what the growth levers are in the business and given the very international nature of the business, give you more color on how various markets across the globe are performing for us.
So I’ll start with a quick reminder of what we do. We are a B2B travel distribution platform. We connect global travel buyers, travel buyers being. Travel agencies, independent travel advisors, tour operators, corporate travel agencies, loyalty companies, any basically anybody who sells travel, we connect them to global travel supply, supply being airlines, hotels, car rentals, transfers, cruise, basically anything related to travel that can be sold online. The business is very global. We operate in more than 150 countries.
We transact in more than 55 currencies. The business operates in more than 16 languages across the globe. We are generally counted Amongst the top four B2B travel distribution platforms and as I’ll show you in subsequent slides, one of the fastest growing B2B travel distribution platforms at this point in time.
So we’ll start with the update for the quarter and for the full year. So it’s been a very good year for us from a growth perspective. Our GTV has grown by 16% and we hit a milestone this year. We crossed 30,000 crores of gross transaction value. Revenue has grown by 25% to 1737 crores. GPU has grown faster than revenue and both revenue and GPU are growing faster than GTV because the saliency of a hotels business, which you all know is the, is the higher margin business has increased quite dramatically this year.
So our hotel business is growing much faster than the airline business. We ended the year with a 22% growth in adjusted EBITDA, ending the year at 329 crores. This is growth along with the fact that we’ve been significantly investing in market development and we’ll give you some color on that. But as a company, we are very happy to report that we’ve been able to drive profitable growth while investing into the future. Q4 numbers are somewhat similar. Revenue has grown by 21%, gross profit has grown by 24% and EBITDA has grown by 15%. So we did our own scorecard. We looked at what went well and what we could have done better.
So as if you look at our financial performance, we’re quite happy with it. Revenue has grown on a 20 at, you know, year on year basis by 25% and EBITDA has grown at a similar level. We have a very strong balance sheet. We have ended the year with roughly 1450 crores of cash, which sets us up well for any Future acquisitions. The Q4 number, especially for the international business, were quite strong in spite of the seasonal impact of Ramadan. So some of you may remember that in the last call we talked about that how Ramadan has moved from April to March and hence Q4 might get impacted. But very happy to report that all regions, including the Middle east actually showed growth in Q4 compared to the same period last year.
We expanded, significantly expanded our footprint. We added 15 new markets this year, notable markets being Australia, France, Germany. Important to note, high value, high transaction, luxury, outbound markets. We accelerated our sales for hiring, especially in Q4. And again, we had talked about it in our last call that this is the key lever for growth for us. So we added nearly 60 more. More people on the ground globally in our, in our sales org the hotels plus. And when we’re saying hotels plus we mean everything non air. So hotels and ancillaries contribution grew from 50% last year to 59% in GTV terms. But if you look at gross profit perspective, almost 84%. So almost, you know quite a very significant portion of our gross profit is now generated from the hotels business.
Last quarter we talked about some of the new AI led initiatives that we were incubating and I’m happy to report they’re going full steam now. The jumbo online integration was successfully completed this year, one year ahead of plan. So the integration was supposed to be completed in October of 2025 which was completed in October of 2024. On the flip side, to be fully transparent, we also analyze what we could have done better. So on the performance on the airline segment has been a struggle this year and we have to look at ways in which we can monetize this business better in the coming year.
We could have managed forex better in the P and L. You will see we have taken a hit on forex, especially in Q3. And in retrospect the volatility that came, you know, after the US elections, we could have foreseen it better. But we have learned some lessons over there. And the third bit is we could have even done even faster expansion in the international market. We waited till Q4 partly because we wanted to have, you know, solid EBITDA growth in the first three quarters. But our conviction on the strategy was much earlier. But we waited a little bit later to act. But we are making up, making up for it in Q1.
Looking at our KPIs, as you all know, we look at active agents and active bookers and just to remind everyone, bookers is the if there are multiple travel bookers in a travel agency, we count those as multiple bookers. So, so our active agents and active bookers are North Star matrix definition of activity is must have issued at least one transaction or one invoice in the year. So at an enterprise level it grew by 7%. But you will see in the international business where most of the hotel business resides, it grew by 18%.
Active bookers grew faster than active agents at a price of 10% in the quarter. GDV looks a bit flattish, but if you looking at the international markets, the GTV actually grew 19% and which also mirrors the growth in the hotels business because most of the international business is anchored around hotels and revenue grew 21% and once again, if you see the growth in the hotel segment in international business, revenue grew by a very healthy 32% compared to same quarter last year. The full year numbers are similar. Active agent base has grown by 9%.
We are almost touching 49,000 active agencies across the globe. Active booker number has grown faster by 12%, hitting almost, you know, getting close to 70,000 active bookers worldwide. GTV grew by 16%. And within that, if you see the growth on the international business for the GDP grew by 43%. And enterprise revenue grew by 25%. This was largely the revenue grew faster than GTV, largely because the hotels business has a disproportionate share of the overall volume now.
So looking at the saliency, and this is a pattern and this is a strategy we’ve been talking about for the last one year. The strategy is to anchor heavily around growing our hotels business. Hotels and ancillary products like sightseeing, car rentals, transfers see far more value in a global distribution platform like us. The fragmentation on hotels, both from a perspective of that there are millions of hotels, Visa with say a few hundred airlines worldwide, and there are thousands of different source markets like cities from which people travel to a hotel. So that their fragmentation or demand and supply so much that hotels and all the ancillary products find platforms like us far more valuable. And that is what we are anchoring around.
And you can see from a gross profit perspective, 84% of our gross profit is not generated by the hotels business and only 13% is anchored around the airline business. I’ll just take a pause here to reflect on growth and what does our hotels business. So the numbers here are hotels, GMV and hotels growth only because the other two large competitors, listed competitors, HBX Group and Webbeds are largely, you know, sellers of hotels. So you will see that we have been the fastest growing platform by a fair distance this year in a very difficult year. Right. So this is a year which has been marked by turbulence.
There have been two global wars, you know, there were elections in many countries, forex fluctuations happened widely. So just to get, you know, set the stage on, you know, what does this growth, what does 35% growth mean in this business? If you anchor around how some of our peers are growing, we’ve been growing significantly faster, albeit on a smaller base, but not as orders of magnitude smaller base.
Our footprint is also very global and secular. And this is important because there is no heavy concentration of business. You will see that 36% of our hotels, GMV hotels plus GMV is now originating out of Europe. Just to remind everyone when we report GMV numbers by geographies, these are source markets where demand is coming from, not destinations. So when we show 36% of the GMV is coming from Europe as a, as a source market, and that’s the largest market for us.
Now, very interestingly, while it is the largest market, it is also the fastest growing market for us. Europe and US are just incredibly large as demand markets for travel, the orders of many orders of magnitude bigger than say smaller markets like India and the Middle East. So we have a long Runway of growth in spite of the fact that Europe is already our largest market, the Middle east and Africa is the second largest market for hotels, with 25% of the contribution coming from there.
This is a relatively small market, and we are very dominant in this market, but very happy to report that in spite of that, we have a. 25% growth this year in the Middle east and Africa market. India is a third market in terms of hotels and it’s grown 8% last year. And then APAC, Latin America and North America sit at a similar volume between 8 and 10% of share.
APAC has been growing fast on a small base saw 66% growth in APAC, Latin America saw 21% growth. Keeping in mind that the currencies in Latin America saw a lot of fluctuation this year because of the, you know, various macroeconomic factors. US remains while euros grew 29. Our expectations from us are much more this year. So what we will do is we’ll spend a few minutes just giving a little bit more color on each of these markets because this is something we appreciate that, you know, our investors want to understand the business a little bit more given how globally diverse it is.
So I’ll start with the India business and I’ll mostly focus on the hotels business because that is the business that the enterprise is focused on. So the India business has seen a 16% growth over the last two years between FY23 and FY25. We have nearly 23,000 transacting agents. We are very quite deeply penetrated in terms of coverage in the market. So we have 69 cities with feet on street within India. The non air saliency in India is quite contrary to the overall business. And this is the number you will see gradually change. Right?
So India is one market where only 16% of our business is non air right now. Which this, and by the way, this number has been improving every year. But this is the journey for us in the India business. And what we have also done is we have revamped our go to market for India. We have two big things that we have done is cross sell because we have a massive base of travel agents buying flights from us and they are also graduating as the overall, you know, overall market matures to outbound travel. A lot of travel agents also need to graduate from selling flights to selling hotels. So that is one key focus area for us to create cross sell and upsell opportunities for our existing transacting agents.
The other thing that we are doing is we have set up what we are calling a platinum desk to make sure that our high touch, high quality agents are getting very high quality service from us because these agents are serving luxury HNI markets and they need a different kind of hand holding and that’s what we’ve set up for India. Middle east is our, for the longest period of time,
Middle east and Africa has been our largest market by GTV this year Europe surpassed Middle east. But irrespective if you see the growth in the Middle east and Africa market, it’s grown quite well at 23% CAGR over last two years. We have more than 5,000 transacting agents in this market. Keep in mind it’s a fairly small market from an outbound travel perspective because small population and except for the gcc, rest of the market doesn’t have a very large discretionary spend as of now. Within the GCC, within the Middle east market, there are 12 countries where we have our own feet on street sales teams. 25% of our overall business at an enterprise level for hotels comes from the Middle east market. Within the market we have a lot of spread of travel agents that work with us. So 40 different countries within Middle east and Africa we have presence.
In terms of travel agencies buying from us, key growth markets this year would be Saudi, South Africa and North Africa and Northern Africa. So the region of Northern Africa is largely Egypt, Morocco, etc. Saudis are special focus because it’s both an important inbound market. As you know. You know we have a DMC business in Saudi and we contract a fair bit of Mecca and Medina. We also work very closely with Saudi tourism to promote overall Saudi as a destination. So Saudi will be a key inbound and outbound market for us, followed by South Africa and Northern Africa.
UAE remains a very large market for us. I think by far we are the largest players in that market. In spite of fair bit of saturation, we continue to see growth in this market. And largely for us, the indication is we are getting share of wallet from our competition in these markets. The key focus from a growth lever perspective is going to be setting up more regional payment methods. Especially when you go outside of the gcc, you need to enable local payments options as well, creating translations for some new languages and pushing ancillary sales. So this is one of those markets where even airline business for us is growing at a fast clip because travel agents have very deep engagement with us. So we are always looking at increasing our spectrum of services that we offer to these travel agencies. Europe, as you know now Europe is the largest market for us.
The GTV growth has been very impressive. You know, of course with one acquisition that we did last year, we have nearly 4,000 transacting agents in Europe. We have 25 countries within Europe where we have actual feet on street, on the ground. So you will see that we are starting to really penetrate the market as well. We have 49 different countries within Europe where we have travel agencies doing business with us. Europe contributes 36% of our overall hotels business this year. Focus markets are high quality, high spending, high gdp, high per cap, per capita income markets like Spain, France, Italy, UK and Germany as outbound demand markets. We have set up a strong in market feet on street over there.
The other focus in Europe has been because Europe is extremely, you know, very multilingual. So we’ve been setting up localized support across major European languages and we operate support out of Ireland, out of out of Spain, out of Greece, out of Israel, out of Poland to make sure that we provide truly local support in the language and culture of the, of the traveler Americas.
We’ve combined North America and South America together over here. Americas have seen good growth, 32%. Growth over the last two years. But our belief is North America should grow faster given it’s on a very small base. Combined they contribute 18% of our hotels business. We have over 5,000 transacting agents in America so it’s a substantial presence. A lot of that presence is concentrated in Brazil which is a key market for us within the region.
We have eight countries where we have our own sales teams and 23 countries within the region actually where we have customer presence. Brazil. We have seen strong growth in Brazil. We continue to invest in that market and Brazil is a very large country. So there are large pockets of the country where we have absolutely no presence right now. And they’ll be focused on building that presence. I’m also very happy to share that we have a new leader which that position was vacant for a while. We have a new sales leader joining as country manager for North America for US and Canada. She joined as of 15th of May. So very new to the market but very hopeful that this will be a turning point for us for the for rest of this year.
And finally, APAC has seen incredible growth. This market had completely shut down during COVID so business has really come down to zero. But it’s an 89% growth CAGR over two years, 2600 transacting agents, nine countries with feet on street sales teams. We have a fairly large presence in Indonesia and now growing presence in Australia. Right now the market contributes 8% to the overall business in 18 countries within the market within the region where we have our travel agents. This year we have been focusing on scaling up the team across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Indonesia. These are all large markets. But we especially hopeful on Australia and New Zealand because while the population is small, the per capita spend on travel is extremely high and outbound travel is a big focus in these markets. So I’ll spend a few minutes now just explaining how we are thinking of business and how we model the business internally. So how we think of growth and what growth levers do we really have.
So now as a platform business, and just like every platform business, there are three things that we can influence. One is the transacting buyer base and this is really a North Star metric for the business at scale. We look at ways in which we can increase the number of buyers on the platform. The second thing we look at is platform frequency and which is no different from other platforms. You try and see can I get the transacting buyer base to transact more often every year or every month or every day.
And the third thing you look at is can I increase the transaction value? Some of it is seasonal in the business of travel, but some of it you have influence on. The thing with this business is these numbers multiply with each other, because if the number of transacting buyers increase, and which is why you will see our GTV grows much faster than our buyer base historically because of the stickiness of the platform and because of the fact that there are multiplier effects that happen in the platform as those buyers become more engaged on the platform.
So the way we. Think of a business is that we need to grow. There are three distinct things that we need to do. We need to grow our buyer base, to grow the number of travel agents on the platform, we need to grow the number of transactions they do on the platform. And then we need to increase the average transaction value on the platform.
Let’s look at some of the levers that we can focus on and the ones that are highlighted are the ones that we actually working on. So on the transacting buyer base, as you’re all aware, we know there’s a very strong focus on market expansion. So opening new markets and extensive work happening across the world right now, but notably in Europe as well, followed by market penetration. Market like Middle east we’ve been around for a long time, but still deep opportunities to deeply penetrate the market. India is another example.
We’ve been around in the market for a long time, but a huge Runway to further penetrate in the market. And then the third bit is churn. Churn is painful for any platform business. So very strong focus on NPS and very strong focus on making sure that our transacting buyers once they are on the platform are deeply engaged and do not churn out on increasing the frequency of transactions.
One is increasing the product portfolio. Significant work happening on improving not just the depth of our hotel’s inventory, but also bringing more focus on ancillaries like transfers and sightseeings to make sure that we have more and more products to sell and travel agents have more and more reasons to come back on the platform. And then we are looking at buyer engagement. This is largely driven through product marketing. So we’ve created a very interesting product marketing stack which is proprietary and in house, which allows us to do very targeted cross sells and upsells and very strategic discounting or additional loyalty to keep the platform, the travel agents engaged on the platform and finally on improving transaction value.
One thing that we have been focused on is focusing on building high quality luxury inventory on the platform. Our thesis has been that because we work with travel agents, largely travelers who book via travel agents are looking at long haul premium travel so their average booking values are higher. So we are doing some initiatives to make sure that we have excellent inventory for luxury and premium hotels.
So look, just to just to reiterate the message, why are we so confident that there’s a large headroom for growth in this business and this business can continue to grow at a high pace for several years to come? We are just getting started in some very large markets. Europe is a prime example of a market which basically did not exist for us pre Covid and is, you know, is the largest market now and still growing at a very fast pace. Developed markets like North America, Australasia, are going to be key markets where we have barely, you know, touched the not even scratched the surface. We have strong long term buyer stickiness. Right. Over 4, 5, 6, 7 years, you would see on cohorts. Right. 35, 37, 40% of the buyers still remain on the platform.
So we have a long Runway, during which once we buy, once we acquire a travel agent, we have a long Runway to monetize. Our travel agency, me again, increasing the frequency of transaction. The ancillary businesses again, just started. The focus is less than. A year old on that business and it’s showing good growth. Interestingly, more than a third of our transacting buyer base is acquired in just the last two years. So all of our international expansion is very recent. So there’s a recency over there. The travel engines have just started with us. Right. A third of our buyer base is just starting working with us. Which means we they will eventually warm up and data shows it they will eventually warm up to book things beyond hotels as well.
And then on luxury travel one I think the overall sentiment of luxury travel is more positive than overall travel. So our belief is luxury travel will continue to grow just as a macroeconomic trend faster than overall travel. And then we are doing specific initiatives to improve our own quality of inventory there as well. So just a couple of things I’ll touch upon before we move to the financials. So market expansion in real terms what does it mean for us? What did it mean last year and what means this year? So on the whole we added about 60 new key account managers in Q4 of last year.
We had talked about this that we will be accelerating our market expansion in Q4. We did that. We have a plan to add another hundred odd salespeople across the globe in the next quarter or two. We opened 15 new countries last year. We are adding 20 new countries to the platform this year. And and these are demand markets and these are market when we say open the countries we all may may already have some travel agents working over there but now we will have feet on street sales team on on the ground driving volumes. And finally North America leader has recently been onboarded. There’ll be a double down focus on building North America and investing in North America to build it out as a key source market for us.
Last quarter we had just briefly touched upon the platinum program and just to remind everyone this is a new program where we launching working with a set of key set of luxury hotels in key destinations key pockets of luxury. Dubai would be an example London or Paris where we work with a few hotels and we create a differentiated program with them where we offer them preferred marketing, preferred listing and preferred placement on the platform. In return the hotels promise us unique and exclusive value adds value ads being things like a guaranteed early check in or a guaranteed room upgrade or a guaranteed late checkout or a meal voucher or a spa voucher. And the thesis here is that if we create a curated set of hand picked hotels which fit well in the scheme of premium or luxury travel travel agents are would promote that.
So if we look at the performance and very early days. It’s been just three months since this program has started. We added 77 hotels across different markets. Now if you see the the benchmark that we are looking at is for these set of hotels did their share of wallet within the city grew. So if I signed up a hotel. Hotel in Dubai or if I signed up three hotels in Dubai. Did the share of TBO’s business to these hotels grow or not? And the results are quite impressive. In the first month, March was really first full month where this program was live. 22% improvement in the share of wallet of the platinum hotels happened. So if out of $100 of business they were getting say $5 of business.
Last year, you know, same period last year they were getting 22% more so more than $6 of business on the TPO platform. This year April was even better on almost a 30% improvement in share of wallet. This is great news because this one, it does two things for us. It creates an additional line of income for us because these hotels are paying us separately for participating on this program.
And secondly it also establishes the ability of the platform to influence buying and purchase decisions. Which is very important for any platform business to drive higher take rates in the.
So with that I’ll hand over to Vikas to present the. Okay, so I’ll hand over to Ankush first to present the India update and then to Vikas for the financials.
Ankush Nijhawan — Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director
Thank you Gaurav and good evening everyone. I think some of the points Gaurav has already covered. But I would definitely like to talk about some exciting stuff. What we are trying to do in India in the hotel space. So in FY25 we continue to consolidate our air business while growing the hotels and ancillary segment in the Indian market.
Our total GDV stood at 14,151 crores in hotel and ancillaries continue to lead the growth recording an 8% yoy. An increase to rupees 2213 crores. Our gross profit for the year reached 220 crores. Driven by strong performance in the hotel segment which delivered a 13% year on increase to 61 crores. Our strategic focus remains on enhancing our non eucency yielded results. With segment GDP contribution now rising to 16% from 14% last year. We have revamped our go to market strategy to leverage the large base of selling air products.
Gaurav did mention about our massive distribution. What we have in touch points with our travel agents in the air business. And that is something we’ll be leveraging to grow our hotel business as well. With a greater focus on upselling and cross selling and ancillaries. We are confident of improving our share of wallet with our buyers.
Our platinum desk program which is a very high account management and inside sales for top customers is seeking good traction. We just launched this actually in Q4 parallel. We are strengthening our domestic supply by onboarding new hotels and obviously the branded chains. Improving the booking experience for our agent is a key priority as a platform and hnext, our next gen booking agent for hotel answeries has been rolled out to 100% of our travel agents in India. It is a faster, more user friendly platform and customized for Indian preferences and should help in boosting convergence on the platform.
Cross sell initiatives such as contextual placement on top selling, hotel inventories during air booking journey, increasing bundle of ancillaries and other salaries are also gaining. Good traction on the operative operational front, the air post booking journey is now fully digitized resulting in a significant improvement in our csat. Our agent partners are valuable stakeholders in our system in the financial year 2025. For the year 25 we recognize our top performing agents across 42 cities span India facilitating over 430 partners of ours.
We firmly believe that our trust based relationship with the travel agents will continue to be a strong pillar to support as the travel and tourism industry grows and evolves. On the macro front, India outbound passenger expected to grow at a CAGR of 7 to 8% over the next 5 to 10 years. Tier 2 cities like Lucknow, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Bhopal etc have emerged as a new demand hub supported by the government. Smart City investments, Regional airport connectivity under the NAN scheme, Jaivore Airport in Noida and Navi Mumbai should be starting very very soon. Enthused by the strong demand, Indian carriers fleet is expected to rise to 2000 aircrafts by 2030 and now expanding their footprints to destinations such as Amsterdam, Manchester, Seychelles and Manila. Thus we see a strong outlook for outbound travel in India.
Consumer behaving is also evolving. Offbeat and experiential destinations are becoming popular with customers showing great interest in attractions and immersive travel. With Indian carriers constantly adding new routes, rising aspirations for outbound travel and preferences for experiential complex iteratories are poised to drive continued momentum in our business. However, I would also like to share that we started decently well in April for the upcoming season. However, the unfortunate incident in Pelga along with the tension between India and Pakistan led to significant disruption in tourism resulting in numerous cancellations for both domestic and international travel.
This development impacted bookings for few days during the peak summer holiday season. During this challenging period we worked very very closely with our travel partners, airlines and hotels going the extra mile to support our customers with cancellations and booking. Now following the ceasefire we are witnessing a normalization in our business and hopefully regaining momentum for the remaining of the summer season.
Now I hand over back to Vikas to give the financial updates.
Vikas Jain — Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Ankush. Good evening and very warm welcome to everyone on this call. Thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to share our financial results for Q4 25 and full FY 2025 for the quarter ended 31 March 25. At an enterprise level we saw good growth in key performance matrices. Hotel’s ETV has grown by 17.4% and now contributes 84% of our gross profit.
Gross profit for the air business grew by 24% year on year despite a degrowth in GTV due to better margin retention. Our revenue from operations grew by 20.9% year over year to reach 446.1 crore. Our enterprise take rate for the quarter improved significantly from 4.91% to to 5.73% year on year. On the back of the increasing hotel saliency adjusted EBITDA reached rupees 79.1 crore representing a 14.6% year on year over growth, while profit after tax came in at 58 point. Crore showing a 27% growth year on year. For the quarter, our adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 17.73% and PAT margins in 13.2%.
Turning to our performance for the full year, our revenue from operations grew by 24.7% to reach 1737.47 crore. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of 328.81 crore and a PAT of 229.89 crore. We maintained our adjusted EBITDA margin similar to the last year despite significant investment in the market development. Additionally, it is important to note that the income tax is applicable now on our wholly owned subsidiary in UAE from the beginning of the current financial year and our effective tax is currently at around 16.3%.
Our balance sheet remains robust with a Net worth of 1195.1 crore as of 31st March 2025. Our cash and cash equivalent including fixed deposits and liquid investments are also Strong standing in 1455.5 crore as of 31st March 2025.
Thank you everyone and we’ll now hand over the call back to asvi.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the Q and A session. Participants are requested to raise their virtual hand to ask a question. Request you to introduce yourself and the firm you represent before going ahead with your question. We have the first question from Mr. Karan Upper. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Karan Uppal
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So Gaurav, just wanted to check on the international markets. So how are you seeing the demand from, you know, some of the key markets like Europe, North America, Latin America in the backdrop of U. S tariff related uncertainty which has impacted US Travel sentiment, especially in US So any impact because of that? That’s. That’s my first question.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yeah, Karan, I think in bits and pieces we have seen, you know in. In Q4 especially we’ve seen in piece in you know, in pockets a little bit subdued demand most mostly where currencies have, you know, been negatively impacted. I think that’s been one big factor. Beyond that, you know, given the scale of our business related to the size of these markets.
These are hundreds of billions of dollars markets each like North America or Europe. Our headroom for growth still remains irrespective of the macroeconomic situation. Of course it’s certain things deeply impact travel for example, you know, if some conflict happens. But beyond that, given our growth right now is more driven by market expansion and adding new markets, we feel, we remain bullish, that yes, it’s going to be a little bit of a tricky year, but we remain bullish on our growth projections.
Karan Uppal
Okay. Second question is on this TBO Platinum, the special service which we have launched recently. So just want to check if the take rate in this is higher than the general take rate in the hotels business. And if you can also mention how much is the GT. TV contribution from this platinum in the hotel business.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
So Karan, you know keeping in mind this program is 60 days old. GDV contribution is relatively small but growing at a fast pace. As you can see the share shift is quite dramatic. You know 20% of wallet share increase for a hotel that is participating in platinum is quite significant. But overall in the big scheme of things it is very small right now. Yes, this business will have incremental take rates.
Very early to comment on what that would look like because really, I mean you know it’s 60 days in, very hard to start forecasting numbers on it. But we are very confident that this, this business will grow and will improve. Take credit.
Karan Uppal
Okay, last question is on the India business. So. So you mentioned that you are doubling down on cross selling the hotels to to the Indian travel age. So our understanding is that travel agents generally buy the hotels from, you know, directly with the DMCs. So, so what is TBO doing differently versus in the past to sell the hotels to Indian agents?
Ankush Nijhawan
I think Karan, yes, I agree with you that they do buy from the DMCs but that’s not the case for every destination. What they are buying that’s primarily, you know, for short haul and very small set of hotels they might have a relationship with. Plus I think the prothoro products what we bring, you know, be it our ancillary services along with sightseeing, excursions and cruise, you know and plus the air product, you know, which obviously has some barrier of entry especially on international airlines. I think as a bundle of what we offer, I think we are definitely very well positioned to further cross sell, you know, to our travel agents in India.
Karan Uppal
Okay, thanks. Thanks and always thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Karan. The next question is from Mr. Manik Tanisha. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Manik Taneja
I thank you for the opportunity. While I have a couple of data questions as well but I first of all want to understand you basically made significant investments in sales and marketing through Q4 and also talking about 100 odd people to be added in the first six months of FY26. So how should we be thinking about your operating expenses growth below gross margins? That’s question number one. And thereby related to that, should we be looking at some more dilution at the EBITDA level because of some of these upfront investments? That’s question number one.
The second question is you’ve talked about the intent to essentially accelerate the ancillary portfolio for customers. Do you think over a period of time this has the potential to improve. Our take rates both at the revenue level as well as well as gross profit level. If you could give us some sense as to how the take rates may vary on the ancillary segment.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yeah, thank you. So, Malik, you’re right. There is significant investment happening. We remain committed to making sure that we preserve EBITDA margins. And this is the promise that we’ve made in the past as well, that we want to demonstrate profitable growth. So, you know, barring anything unforeseen that comes up in the international business, we are, you know, the plan is to continue to grow at a similar pace as last year, though on a much bigger base and preserve EBITDA margins. Right. That’s a broad theme for the international business at this point in time.
On the second question on ancillaries, Manik, see the. There are two ways to look at ancillaries. And right now, ancillaries is a play on making sure a travel agent has more reasons to come on the platform. Right. So and which is both activity on the platform and number of transactions on the platform. That’s the way we are thinking of ancillaries in the long run. And this would not be, say, you know, next few quarters at all. But in the long run, the more fragmented a product is, the higher the take rate and higher gross margin. Right. So ancillaries are, you know, meaningfully more fragmented compared to say, hotels. So we do expect to do that business at scale at higher take rates and higher gross margins.
But today it is really more about making sure that we have created enough reasons for a travel agent to come on the platform and we don’t leave a reason for them to leave the platform, which is why the comprehensiveness of the product is very important. So for example, we do Indian rail in India just so that don’t leave the platform. We do Europe rail for European markets as well. Right. So those may be low margin products, but they are important for the completeness of the platform.
Manik Taneja
Sure. Just to clarify on this margin outlook, so when you essentially guide for managing margins, do you think about them as EBITDA as a percentage of GTV or EBITDA as a percentage of revenues purely because of the mixed areas or take rates continue to go up?
And the second question is for Vikas, if you could call out as to what could be the drag that we saw in the current quarter because of the, because of Ramadan falling during the quarter in the Middle east business.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
So Marik, I am referring to revenue, sorry, EBITDA as a percentage of revenue. So essentially and we’ve talked about it in the past, that idea is that the business generates operating leverage. Reinvest the operating leverage. But let’s not dilute EBITDA margins. Right? That’s the way we’re building on the hotels business.
Vikas Jain
And on your question on the Dragon, There on the basis of because of the Ramadan. As Gaurav also explained in doing his presentation sets while we were expecting that there could be a big drag due to the Ramadan but that was not there. We were able to even due to the even though the Ramadan fall in in March, we had a good growth in the Middle east in. In this last quarter.
Manik Taneja
Sure. Thank you. I’ll come back in the in the follow up.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Thank you. Yeah,
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from Mr. Navin Kaushik. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with the question. Mr. Naveen, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Sorry Naveen, we can’t hear you.
Operator
We’ll move on to the next participant. Mr. Swapnil, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Hi everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is with respect to your employee costs. So if you see the cost on an absolute basis Q on Q between 3Q and 4Q and they seem to have been flat. While we have also maintained mentioned that there was a roughly around 60 odd additions in our sales force during the quarter. So any particular reason these additions are not getting reflected in our cost increase on a quarter on quarter basis, particularly this quarter. I’ll follow up with the design of the follow up to this question but I will just stop here first.
Vikas Jain
Sorry, which cost line? Something you’re talking about
Ankush Nijhawan
Payroll
Swapnil Potdukhe
Employee expenses which were around 100 crores last quarter. This quarter they are 99 crores. Yeah.
Vikas Jain
So as we explained earlier as well. So at times since these employees that we are having new employees or the new salesperson that we are coming in they may not be employee of a particular legal entity. So the cost didn’t fall under the employee expenses. The cost is captured as part of the other expense. We have a head called Business support Services. The cost get captured in that head and that head had shown increased. I can share offline the increase in that cost with you later.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. And just to get a clarification as to how many sales employees we will have. So this 60 edition will be on what base?
Gaurav Bhatnagar
This 60 edition is on a.
Vikas Jain
So overall the buyer or the sales person for the international business excluding Jumbo have moved to now 314 from a 250 last year.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. And. And. Vikas just keeping on this line item. So there’s one if I look here to your balance sheet also there’s a delta in your assets under development by around 25 crores. You know in. So just wanted to get are are we capitalizing any of the cost maybe related to the platform or something else? Some clarification on that side.
Vikas Jain
Yeah. Yes, we have been capitalizing the cost that we are incurring on the tax side especially where we see there would be future benefits occurring due to the seed and the. And a part of that cost is getting capitalized under the intangibles.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Okay. And okay. And then there were some exceptional items also the one I think is related to the currency and there was another 9 crores of exceptional item. If you could just give some color on that
Vikas Jain
In the last quarter. The 9 crore of income that is showing under the exceptional items is primarily because of an old receivable which we had from a Kuwait collection agent that had been written off in past earlier. So we did a recovery of 9cr this year in the last quarter and that has got recorded as an exceptional item in the P L.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. And on the currency side any cost we could expect going ahead as well because last time you meant that you.
Vikas Jain
So on the currency side as we had mentioned in the last call we had started hedging our exposures for the international market as well. And that’s the reason that there has been some increase in the cost in Q4 but it is obviously lower than Q3 cost where we we had losses due to the foreign exchange fluctuations. But now we have started hedging. So hedging obviously would have some premium cost coming in in the P and L and that’s what is accounted for in the current year. Current quarter cost.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Got it. And just one question on growth as well. See our GDP growth has now come down to 19% in the international side even the domestic growth is you know declined by 11% this quarter. Particularly I mean frankly speaking where we started right two quarters back even we were growing on an organic basis. We were growing 35 odd percent which was phenomenal. In international going ahead how do you see the business doing especially given the macro challenges also are there should we start building in a slightly lower growth rates in our models or I mean just a color as to how do you see growth, you know, given the challenges
Gaurav Bhatnagar
On the international. Business we remain, you know, consistent with what we’ve been saying in the past. We will continue to grow, you know, how we have grown on a full year basis, you know, in this year as well. That’s the objective though on a larger base. Right. So on a dollar terms it’ll be large, faster growth. Also something important to note that there is a lag. You know it’s a retail business. Right.
You sign up these small travel agents and they start doing business with you over a period of time. So there is a lag in when your sales team onboards when they start to become meaningfully productive and when the travel agency onboard start to become meaningfully productive. So they should. There’s going to be some kind of a roll on effect hopefully by Q4 or next year, Q1 from all the work that we’re doing today. So they meant it may not have EVGA this year on this quarter impact, but it will add up. Right.
So we would not, you know, we would not pull back on our growth targets or both forecasts at all. India has been challenging, especially on the airline side because you know the airline business is largely a two player market, very commoditized so that brings some headwinds. We do expect to see some growth on hotels though
Swapnil Potdukhe
Just to extend that point. On India, your hotels business grew 16%. Now given the outbound travel rush which is there very evident. Right. To all of us, would it, would it be fair to say that we may have done better than what we have done in the last couple of years? Probably. And, and going ahead, any particular change that you were driving that that could lead to faster growth than 16 given that is your home market. We understand this market far better than some of the international international markets.
Ankush Nijhawan
Fair questions. I think in the presentation what we were talking in the beginning, I think 37 of our buyers, you know, buy eight lane line tickets, you know, are actually transacting non air and hotels with us. So I think that’s a lot of good headroom for us, you know, to further penetrate into these new agents. Plus I think the platinum desk and gold desk, you know what we were kind of telling in the beginning, you know, which is obviously high touch point for our travel partners. I think the intention for us is to win more share of wallet from existing top customers. Right. So I think if as long we do these things correct, you know, we should have some good growth or decent growth in India this year.
Operator
Sorry Mrs. Swapnan, I request you to join back the queue if possible.
Swapnil Potdukhe
Sure, no worries. I’ll come back in the. Thanks a lot.
Operator
The next question is from Mr. Moishe Chandani. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Moez Chandani
Yeah. Hi, good evening and thank you for taking my question. My first question was on your monthly transacting buyers. Now you’ve mentioned a few times that’s the North Star metric. But when I look at your international number, that’s been flat for about three quarters. So that’s about 9,900 to 10,000 to 10,000. And so what should we think about this going forward? Do you expect this to accelerate given our investment in sales team?
Gaurav Bhatnagar
So look, Moesh, the way we, this number has two elements that we need to look at. One is that from a perspective of seasonality, these numbers varies quite widely because travel agents, especially like in the, in the developed market, the travel agent will start booking in one quarter, say six or seven. Say what travel that’s going to happen six or nine months in advance and then they will kind of go silent for the next several, several months because they, they will get active again in the next season.
The other bit is the natural seasonality that comes in because of like things like Ramadan. So if you see the full year basis, there is a significant growth that happens in this, in this number and that is the acquisition of travel agency that is happening. So while the number is flattish on a quarter by quarter basis, it’s not the same set of travel agents who are active in Q1 and active in Q2 and active in Q3. And hence this number is significantly different from a full year number. When I talked about how we look at growth, this is the second element of increasing the frequency of transactions from the travel agent. So when the seasonality changes, if the number remains flat, effectively there is organic growth happening in the business. So that is the way I would read it. So it’s not the same set of travel agents were static from one to the second to the third quarter.
Moez Chandani
All right, sure, thanks. Understood. Then second, on your expansion in North America, so you know, you’ve talked about hiring a sales leader there. How should we think about this going forward? Do you expect to grow this organically or do you think that you would look at acquisitions the way you look at it in Europe?
Gaurav Bhatnagar
I think we’ll continue to explore both the opportunities, right. Organic and inorganic. And likely that is the best combination to look at. And Europe is a good example of it. We did something inorganic. In fact, we do two inorganic acquisitions over there. But then we built out a very strong organic salesforce as well. So, you know, that combination works best. Hard to say what happens in North America, but needless to say, you know, irrespective of North America, across the globe, we continue to explore opportunities for acquisitions.
Moez Chandani
Understood. And just my last question on the India business, right. So that has seen a GTV decline this year, but how do we look at it going forward? Do you think that your growth in hotels should compensate for the weakness that we continue to see in air, or do you think that would still be a small decline in this segment going forward on a GTV perspective.
Ankush Nijhawan
So on the air side, yes, there is a small degrowth, you know, and for us, you know, one, we focus, we want to maintain our GP on the air business rather than going on the GDP side. So as long we even see a little degrowth in this business, but continue with our gp, I think that’s the intent. And obviously. A play on the amazing massive distribution we have, you know, which we have built because of the air business. Right. Obviously to start selling our hotel in our non segment there.
Moez Chandani
Got it. Thank you. Thank you for your responses.
Operator
Thank you, sir. The next question is from Mr. Mohit Mutwani. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Mohit Motwani
Hi. Am I audible?
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yes.
Mohit Motwani
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on the, you know, growth in the international business. You know, you spoke that, you know, you remain confident on the growth in FY26 now in terms of, you know, Europe, as you spoke about being one of the key source market for you, where in France, Germany, Italy are some of the key source markets. You know, some of the major hotel chains and airlines, you know, in US have, you know, downgraded their guidance in terms of the full year calendar 25. Given tough macro situations. Can you give us some sense, you know, where are you expecting, you know, this growth to come from? Is it more concentrated into geographies or is it the fact that you are expanding into more geographies that will contribute to growth? So if you can give us some sense on which geographies will contribute to the international growth and the hotels.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
No fair, Mohit. I think, you know, we have to, we are, sometimes we take, we are taking a contrary view to the broader macroeconomic commentary or to what some of the larger players are saying. And this is only because we are coming from a very small base in very large markets. A lot of growth that is happening today is demand aggregation. So we are not really riding the overall demand shift in the market, but we’re looking at aggregating a lot of, you know, underserved or fragmented demand across thousands and thousands of small travel agents. So that’s, that’s the immediate trigger for growth.
So the combination of the fact that we open new markets where we start from zero, so you know, the growth is very high. Often triple digit growth will happen in a country once you start, you know, setting up presence over there. And second is even large, even countries where we’ve been around for a long time and that like Brazil is an example or UAE is an example, you will still see that, you know, healthy double digit growth is happening right north of say 20 growth happening in, in countries in the GCC where we’ve been around for a long time.
So our, our conviction remains that because we are aggregating fragmented demand, as long as that fragmentation is visible, we will continue to grow. Right. It is only in certain markets where the significant, you know, when your market share starts to become meaningful, do you start to anchor around the macroeconomic situation in the market? For now, we are small enough for us to be able to continue to grow by just, you know, aggregating what’s previously not been aggregated by others.
Mohit Motwani
Sure. Thank you. That’s helpful. My other question is, you know, if you can speak a little bit about the competitive intensity, which is, you know, spicing up in the B2B space, one of the leading, you know, B2C OTAs is scaling up the B2B as well. So are there any pricing pressures that you are forcing, you know, in the coming year? I understand that you had already mentioned in the previous calls that you are looking for absolute EBITDA growth and not expanding margins as you are investing. Back in the business. But any pricing pressures that you foresee, you know, in the coming year.
Ankush Nijhawan
Yeah. So with what you just said, yeah, definitely, you know, there is pressure on the air business, you know, in the B2B space. But I think our thesis still remain on our outbound hotel premium business, you know, which I think we are doing fairly well. But I think yes, on the air business, definitely, you know, we do, we are seeing some pressure there as well.
Mohit Motwani
And if you can, you know, just give a data point on how much would be the churn in the agent based in the international side.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Churn is a very difficult metric to report in our business because you see, it’s not a subscription business that some, you know, when the customer churns, we get to know that day because they did not renew their subscription. Right. So it’s a transaction business. And travel agents, like I explained, have massive seasonality. So there is a long, long tail of travel agents who will come every few weeks or every few months. And there is no regularity to it. So we don’t know at what point they have actually churned out.
The metric that we have been looking at is NPS to see, you know, what is the customer satisfaction on the platform. Right. So that’s one and that number is very high. I think we’ve not reported it previously, so I’m stating a specific number but we’ll bring it up eventually. The second bit is we do look at churn amongst what we call our say, large and managed partners. So how much churn is happening in the top 500, you know, travel partners, travel agents that we work with. And there the churn is very, very slow. I mean it’s a low single digit ch.
Mohit Motwani
Sure, that’s all helpful. Thank you for answering the questions. I’ll come back in.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you, Mohit. The next question is from Mr. Pratik Kumar. So please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Prateek Kumar
Hello. Yeah, good evening everyone. My first question is on M and A opportunity. So market seemingly is weak as you suggest. So does this result into acceleration of how many opportunities which you might be analyzing because obviously you have a very good balance sheet or is this the status quo in terms of your.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yeah, we continue to explore and am I audible to you, Prateek?
Prateek Kumar
Yes, you are.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
So, Prateek. Look, we continue to explore M and A opportunities globally. You know, the thing with good assets is that, you know, they are somewhat immune to, you know, market reality. So we, we are not very opportunistic in saying that. Can we find something cheap because there is some headwind in the market. So. And we are very cautious on, you know, what we want to do. So I can only say at this point that absolutely, you know, open to looking at opportunities, but nothing to, you know, nothing material or concrete to report at this point in time.
Prateek Kumar
Sure. Okay. Second question is on employees. Total number of employees as of FYI, 25. And what was the international employee? Is in this overall mix.
Vikas Jain
So as of 31st March 25th we have total 2,357 employees plus the consultants or retainers because in most of the international market we don’t have legal entities they working more as a retainer or a consultant. So total Employees as of 31st of March is 2357 out of which employees based outside of India is at around 772.
Prateek Kumar
And this 2357 has increased from what number? FY24. And
Vikas Jain
FY24 it was at around 2080.
Prateek Kumar
Okay. And most of this increase would be international related?
Vikas Jain
Yes it is. It is primarily in the international market and even in the India market with the increase is there it’s more primarily into the the platform related businesses or, or the or the teams that are supporting the international markets.
Prateek Kumar
Okay. On your expansion strategy in various large and new and upcoming markets. So have you seen any challenges related to cost which has surprised you negatively as and as a result has weighed on the margins or how have you seen like sort of particularly new markets? I’m talking about
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Prateek. I think in certain markets, especially in developed markets, the gestation period is a little bit longer to achieve you know, positive roi. It’s not substantially longer but significantly longer than some other markets just because you know people cost is high and also propensity to try something new is slightly lesser. So as you go into more and more mature markets where people are, you know, the businesses are been around for a long time, they’ve established relationships. It does take a little bit extra time to truly demonstrate your value proposition.
But at the same time the cost of personnel or cost of contractors or sales associates is high in those markets. So it’s nothing negative or nothing surprising, nothing which has made us pull back from any market at all. But yes, that is the reality. The flip side is that these markets, once they start playing because the average transaction value in developed market is much more than say market like India and somewhat less price sensitive. Once you find your product market fit, the growth is quite steep as we are seeing in Europe right now.
Prateek Kumar
And related question is do you are you able to forecast or maybe I don’t know guide when is the inflection point on margins when this operating leverage which we discussed about will probably can play? Is it like 26N27 or maybe I don’t know further out in the years?
Gaurav Bhatnagar
See Pratik, look, it’s a very fair question. We, if we, you know, if we kind of pause where we are planning to at in this year in terms of. You know what we’re investing in market expansion. See three, three to four quarters out. We should absolutely be seeing operating leverage. Right there is the math. Absolutely. You know, works in that direction. So if we do finish our most of our investments in Q1 and Q2, at least, you know, hints and traces of operating leverage should start to show up in Q4.
Prateek Kumar
Charman, last question on your international business grew by 43% in FY25. What is the like for like growth? I mean this is the data question. Unlike for like growth for, I mean, for this.
Ankush Nijhawan
So if you’re talking about the organic growth without jumbo.
Prateek Kumar
Yeah, organic growth without jumbo. I mean, I was asking that. Yeah, sorry,
Ankush Nijhawan
30%.
Prateek Kumar
So 30% international business grew X of Jumbo FY 25 or 24. And that is the kind of expectation going forward as well on organic basis.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
The expectation, Prateek. Yeah, expectations and, you know, similar ballpark. Keep in mind, it’s a larger base.
Prateek Kumar
Yes. Yeah, I mean, but this first quarter of FY25, 26 will have some rub off of timing shift of Easter and I don’t know, Ramadan.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yeah. So Pratik, I think what has happened is Ramadan did not have as bad an effect as we thought it might have on numbers Q4. So that was a positive surprise. However, Easter did, you know, also have played an impact. So. Yeah, but this is the start, this is the early start of, of the summer. So as you know, most of European northern hemisphere summer is actually July and August. So we’ll start to see booking up search happen across Q1 and we should see healthy growth.
Prateek Kumar
Sure. Thank you. I’ll get back to the queue.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. That was the last question for the day. I would like to now hand it over to Mr. Gaurav for his closing remarks.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Yeah, no, thank you, Ashvi. And thank you for all the insightful questions. You know, I do believe there was a little bit more question, but we’re really out of time right now. But happy to engage, you know, with, with investors and analysts over the course of next couple of weeks as well. Thank you so much.
Ankush Nijhawan
Thank you.
Vikas Jain
Thank you everyone.
Operator
Thank you, everyone. You can now disconnect your line sa.