Thomas Cook (India) Ltd (NSE: THOMASCOOK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 14, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Madhavan Menon — Executive Chairman
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director – Sterling Holidays Resorts
K S Ramakrishnan — Chief Executive Officer of DEI
Debasis Nandy — President and Group CFO
Ms. Purva — NA
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Navid B — Analyst
Akshay — Analyst
Chetan — Analyst
Yasho Vartha Nagrawal — Analyst
Advait Lata — Analyst
Praneet — Analyst
Deepak Lalwani — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
IT. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for patiently holding. The conference will begin shortly. Please stay connected, do not disconnect. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for patiently holding. The conference will begin shortly. Please stay connected, do not disconnect. Thank you. It. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 in FY25 earnings conference call of Thomas Cook India Private Limited. Hosted by Batriwala and Karani securities India Private Limited. As a reminder, all participant line will be in 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 SAD and zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Purva from Bartliwala and Karani securities India Private Limited.
Thank you. And over to you ma’ am.
Ms. Purva — NA
Hi. Thank you, Sejal. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us on Thomas Cook India Limited Q4 and FY25 earnings call conference call from the company. We have with us Mr. Mahesh, Managing Director and CEO and the Senior management team. We would like to begin the call with a brief opening remark from the management following which we will have the forum open for an interactive Q and A session. I would now like to invite Mr. Manish Iyer to make the initial remarks. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Purva. Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As we present our results for fourth quarter and full year of FY 2025. It is also my pleasure to share with you an overview of our company’s performance, progress and prospects. And I appreciate your continued interest and support from all our investors and stakeholders. I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for the inputs that you have given from time to time. And you will appreciate that we tried to capture some of that in the investor deck that we presented to you. Before I begin to give you a commentary on the Q4 and FY25 performance, I’d like to introduce the management team who joins me on the call today.
I have with me in the room Vishal Suri, managing director and CEO of SOTC Ltd. I have Debashish Nandi, president and group CFO Thomas Cook India Ltd. Vijay Modi, CFO of Thomas Cook India Ltd. Vikram Nalwani, MD and CEO of Sterling Holiday Resorts and KS Ramakrishnan, CEO of DEI. I’m also joined by Urvashi Bhutani whom you all know manages the investor relationship. As you can see, ThomasScope India Limited delivered a robust set of numbers for the full year ended March 2025. Our results demonstrate not only a resilient financial performance, but more importantly, the strategic momentum across all our business verticals.
We have continued to build our strength while adapting to the evolving industry landscape with agility and foresight. Before I get into the numbers and dwell into it, I’d like to mention that CommScope India Limited was presented the Best Annual Reports Award 2024 in the Travel Service category presented by Free Press Journal. Moving on to the performance for the full year as well as the quarter, income from operations for the quarter ended Q4 of FY25 grew 18% and consequently our profit before tax improved by a sharp 51% moving from 60 crores to 91 crores. If I look at the full year numbers, our income from operations grew by 12% from 7,300 crores to 8,200 crores, registering a growth of 12%.
Consequently, our profits improved from 333 crores to 382 crores, which is a growth of 15%. As you will appreciate that this quarter typically is an investment quarter, but for two consecutive quarters in FY24 and in FY25 we actually turned the quarter to be profitable. Goes on to reflect upon the fact that the seasonality of travel is beginning to above and you will start seeing more of a flattened curve as we go along. Some of the factors that are driving our performance or drew our performance in Q4 and for the full year was strong performance in the travel and travel related segments.
Foreign Exchange Sterling holiday resorts the one business in our group that didn’t do well is DEI and Mr. Ramakrishnan will dwell upon that during his conversation. Let me first start talking about the quarterly performance on the profitability front. As I said, our profitability grew by a sharp 51% moving from 61 crores to 91 crores and I think that’s the highest ever quarterly profit that we’ve seen for this specific quarter. If I look this was aided by a strong performance on the travel and travel related segments while on the foreign exchange segment you will see a slight bit of degrowth on the EBITDA margins and that’s largely on account of the front loading of investments that we did and I will cover that when I speak about the foreign exchange services.
I’d like to quickly dwell on the financial services segment before I move on to the travel segment. Our financial services reported a 14% growth in revenue with EBIT margins at 43% and for the corresponding period in the full year Our debit income from operations grew by 8% and EBITDA improved by 21% moving from 123 crores to 150 crores. Our EBIT margins improved from 41% in FY24 to 46%. And this is largely in line with what we had guided the market to a range of 40 to 45% and we believe that’s the range the business will operate in.
Some of the key highlights for the performance for the quarter and for the full year has been the strong growth on the retail segment. Our retail volumes grew by 11%. You’ll appreciate that the numbers that you see in the results does not reflect the gross output. It only reflects the revenue from businesses. I’m trying to give you a lens on the gross volumes that we have clocked in. Retail volumes grew by 11% aided by education segment which grew 26%. Y o y and the holiday segment grew by about 5%. Yoy if I look at the corporate segment, that was another strong segment which grew about 8% year on year.
Our prepaid card business had a very strong momentum. Our overall volumes inched closer to the billion dollar mark growing by about 5% as compared to FY24 and consequently our float on the business inched closer to about 1325 crores. From a segmentation, from a card segmentation point of view, I’ve spoken about it in the past. We had an enterprise card focused on the corporate segment. We had the Study Buddy card focused on the education segment. And I’m happy to report that in the quarter that went by, we actually launched our holiday card called the Borderless Prepaid.
Because this segment that we are referring to is the largest segment as far as the NRS data is concerned. If you look at the LRS data published by RBI, the total volume is roughly about $30 billion. Exit FY 2024 and I think the FY25 numbers will be closer to that or a shade lower considering that the numbers till February was 1% lower than what was reported in FY24. Given that we are looking at an addressable market of about $18 billion consisting of the enterprise business as well as the holiday travelers. This was a big opportunity for us and we wanted to do a Big Bang approach and hence we roped in a brand ambassador in the form of Tati Karian.
It’s an investment that we have made and this is one of the reasons why our EBIT margin as well as the EBIT for the quarter came in a little lower than what we delivered in the same quarter of last year. This is a front loading of the investments. The returns on that will come in the subsequent quarters. Moving on to the travel and travel. Sorry, I just want to add one more point on the forex side. Our digital adoption continues to be very strong. Our digital adoption has moved from 20% to 21% in the quarter and for the full year remains at about 21.5%.
So we have seen a steady progress as far as our digital adoption is concerned. Digital KYC, the WhatsApp tool, the FxMate tool. I think all the digital tools that we use in the marketplace are seeing good traction and we will continue to build on the momentum that we have created. Moving on to the travel and travel related segments. As you can see, we’ve given a little more color to it in our investors deck. It consists of two parts, B2B and B2C. The B2B contributes about 74% of the overall volumes and the B2C businesses contribute 26% of the overall volumes.
We had a very strong growth across both the segments, which is the B2B and B2C. My colleague Debashish will talk about the B2B segment and specific reference to the DMS units, India and International and I’ll walk you through the B2C segments here. If you look at the B2C segments for the full year on a comparative basis, for the full year our overall volumes grew 20% moving from 1,463 crores to 1,750 crores and for the quarter moved up from 253 crores to 302 crores, reflecting a strong double digit growth. I’d also like to highlight here that for the quarter, for the fourth quarter of FY25 we actually both the international domestic and the overseas international business came higher than the pre pandemic numbers.
This is something that we’ve been calling out for some time saying that we expect the recovery to happen, but the last quarter actually saw the recovery higher than what we had in the pre pandemic events. Obviously for the full year it still trails. That’s because the first three quarters were not so strong. The recovery on the long haul did not pan out as expected, but the last quarter was a very strong one and that kind of aided the profitability and the growth in the income from operations. Moving on to the MICE and the corporate travel segment, we had some strong momentum both on the MICE side as well as on the corporate travel side of it.
On the my side of it, you’ll recollect that the large part of 2025, FY 2025 we didn’t have any common business but the last quarter which we called out in the previous earning call we were executing a common business which is the National Games in Uttarakhand. We completed that in the mid of February 2025 and clocked the volume of about close to 100 crores which kind of helped the business. What’s important, if you Compare it from FY24 to FY25 you’ll see that despite the government business coming about 50% lower than what we had in the previous financial year, our corporate business actually grew by 6% from 1188 crores to 1256crores.
On the corporate travel side I think typically March is a low quarter, seasonally low quarter I would put because a lot of budgets got frozen and the new budgets are allocated much later. So we had a bit of a slower offtake I would say. And there is also some impact of the tariffs that came in because there was a lot of ambiguity how to what the impact of it on OPECs are going to be. So we saw a bit of a delayed decision making Also some of the new wins that we had which were likely to go live in the last quarter of FY25.
Actually moving on to the first quarter of FY 2026. Overall I’m happy to report that our focus on improving our non air share on the corporate travel has worked. While our non air share in the previous year FY24 was 6% it’s actually trend up 200 basis points higher at about 8% and I think that’s a healthy sign because that improves our yields and margins in the businesses. We continue to acquire new customers on the corporate travel segment and we added about 11 new corporates in the quarter in question on the B2C side. Before I hand over to Deepashish, I just want to mention that we continue to expand our deep distribution network between SOTC and Tomscope.
We’ve added close to about 11 locations during the quarter and for the full year roughly about 21 new locations. That represents about roughly 12 13% of our overall distribution network. And we continue to invest in growing our distribution more specifically in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. Our digital spends and our digital adoption continues on the holiday side and we continue to invest in newer technologies and you’ll realize that we’ve actually went live with TC and ez, the two voice bots or rather chatbots that we have Made Live which enables customers to convert web leads into leads which can then be converted into actual bookings.
I think overall I’m pleased with the performance of the group. I think we have had a good set of numbers and I now hand it over to Devashish to take you all through the DMS units both India and internationally. Over to you Debishish.
Debasis Nandy — President and Group CFO
Thank you Mahesh. Good morning everyone. So I take you through the DM of Destination Management Services and I split into two parts, the India business and the Overseas business. The India business is in Travel Corporation of India contributes over 18% of the overall DMS business and operates in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. The Eman business had a good year. The turnover grew by 17% in the quarter and 21% for the full year reached about 629 crores for the full year. This was largely driven by the strong business from the top five source markets which included UK, France, Germany, USA and Russia.
During the quarter the company also saw 11% increase in the passengers in the leisure segment and on the charter segment they saw 2.3 times increase on a year on year basis. The India in Mall business has also. Opened a new office in Tajiling and has onboarded new reps in Russia, Mexico and Scandinavia in a bid to sort of broaden network and capture new markets. Moving on to the international GMS entities which contributes over 82% of the turnover. So I’ll try to give you some color on the composition of that. We have Asian Hence which operates largely in Southeast Asia across about nine countries and they contribute of the international business. Desert adventures operating in UAE, Jordan and Oman contributes to 34% of the business. Lit Pro operates in US and Canada or contribute to 19% of the business.
And then you have Private Safari South Africa and East Africa contributing to 4 and 3% of the business respectively. Overall the DMS business has had, you know, has had a good year both in terms of good year and a good quarter and I will try and add some specific comments on the individual entities now. So. For the quarter the DMS business grew about 26% and for the full year it’s about 23%. Desert Adventures saw healthy increase, you know, more particularly in the mine segment, the FIT business was a little subdued because of lower contributions of CIS countries. For the MICE segment which operates under a brand name of Cultune for CBC and bookings including major events such as for Amway which had a record top line of over 108 crores and BMW and in addition the luxury travel segment which operates under brand name Arabian Lux and the OTF business showed very encouraging growth.
Asian Trails delivered positive growth in the quarter and the market that did well. Thailand, Vietnam and Australia as also Indonesia us. It is a low season for us but it did particularly well during the quarter and it is expected to even better as summer sets in. Coming on to Africa. South Africa should bring steady year on year performance with improved contribution margins both from the Group 2s as well as mice. East Africa lagged behind. That’s the only unit which lagged behind the bid primarily due to the absence of the business that used to get from fti.
As we have mentioned in the past, FTI is a large customer German customer which went bankrupt sometime during the first quarter and that has affected the East African business. However, the company continues to make progress on strengthening the business from the existing partners and it’s also accessing new markets to make up for the shortfall. That’s all I have and I will now hand it over to Vikram, Vikram Nalwani who will talk to you about Sterling. Vikram, over to you.
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director – Sterling Holidays Resorts
Yeah, thanks Devasheesh and good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us on this call today. My name is Vikram Lalwani, I’m the MBA and CEO of Sterling Holiday Resorts and I’m joined by my colleague Krishna Kumar who is the CFO and we are joining in from our Chennai headquarters at sterling. Sterling closed FY25 with a 10% revenue growth from operations and a margin of 34% underscoring the transformative journey and the turnaround the company has taken since FY22. This has been a year of consolidation and strengthening our position in the hospitality sector. Driven up by scaled up room supply, completion of robust technology and distribution transformation that can now even sustain us for a scaled up two to three times the number of resorts and destinations without much incremental fixed costs.
The onboarding of critical leadership to support the significant expansion through planned in FY26 and what we had undertaken in FY25 we crossed several key milestones during the year. The company’s revenue crossed INR 5 billion for the first time. This represents a 10% growth over FY25. Operationally total revenue which includes other income reached a figure of 5200 INR million marking a 13% year on year increase. EBITDA stood at 1.697 million reflecting a 34% margin which is still above industry average absolute. EBITDA remained in line with the previous year despite investment related costs incurred during the ramp up of new resorts and the sunset of a member acquisition model and product.
Profit before tax stood at INR 1,131 million and sterling now has remained profitable profitable for 20 consecutive quarters. We are debt free and we continue to remain debt free. We have strong cash reserves of over 2,700 INR billion. Our operating performance was driven by a significant expansion of our resort footprint in FY25, a 6% improvement in the guest ratio from 69% to 75% even as the room supply grew through the year and a 16% increase in guest food and beverage spends during FY25. Progressively over the year we opened 14 new resorts averaging more than opening one resort a month in Q4 FY25 alone.
We launched four new resorts in Javai, Jaisalmya in Rajasthan, Piteshwar in Maharashtra and Amritsar in Punjab. The full year performance of these 14 properties shall be reflected in FY26. We expanded from 47 to 61 resorts in FY25, growing the room inventory from 2,500 to close to 3,300 rooms, almost a 22% increase. Our footprint now extends across 17 Indian states with strong regional clusters in Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand. Apart from other Indian states, our portfolio spans several leisure themes with 14 resorts in wildlife destinations, 13 resorts in the Himalayan network and 11 in spiritual circuits.
We continue to scale through an asset right model and through sweating our existing own assets as well. With most of the fixed costs already incurred, we are well positioned to maintain this growth momentum even into FY26. Our occupancy for FY25 stood at close to 60% with an expanded room supply base that ramped through the year. We sold over 600,000 room nights, a 14% year on year increase and maintained an average rate of 6200 INR reflecting strong dynamic pricing discipline in the leisure segment. As you’re aware we are largely leisure driven. Apart from room revenue, the next big significant line of business is food and beverage.
Food and beverage crossed 1000 million INR for the first time growing at 16% YoY driven by higher in house guest dining participation, innovative restaurant concepts and increased revenues from weddings and from mice which is conferences and meetings. In Q4FY25 the revenue stood at 1,164 million INR and EBITDA stood at 345 million INR. The quarterly EBITDA was impacted partly in Q4FY25, one time impacted by the sunset of membership acquisition approximately 20% a one time year end provision reversals in FY24 which is approximately 25 30% onboarding of new leadership and investment in technology platforms and reskilling and transitioning of membership acquisition teams into new roles.
From a customer experience and the brand recognition perspective, we continue to set benchmarks in our guest delight. We are pleased to announce that TripAdvisor Traveler’s Choice Awards Our resort in Khana won the best the best for the third consecutive year that is the top 1% of the resorts being recognized globally amongst 8 million listings globally. 30 of our resorts were awarded the TripAdvisors Traveler Choice Awards which is top 10% globally. 10 of them won it for the third time in a row and 8 of them won it for two times in a row. Our flagship property Sterling Puri 121 rooms was awarded the best family resort for the year at the CMO Asia Odisha leadership awards in 2025.
In the last couple of quarters, Sterling has embarked on a journey called Sterling Sankalp which defines our sustainability and ESG banner. Sterling’s ESG initiative continues to focus on sustainability and community upliftment with several initiatives. Energy Efficiency We’ve deployed heat pumps in most of our hill stations, EV charging stations and investments in solar and wind energy waste management, Plastic elimination via in house water bottling plants in several of our resorts Water conservation initiatives in rainwater harvesting and grey water recycling From a CSR perspective, we have supported the project Dialysis in FY25 through Fairfax India Charitable Foundation.
Notably, Sterling Munnar was also awarded the Gold winner in the 14th RCI Green Awards sector, becoming the first resort in the entire Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific region to receive this prestigious honor from them. This award recognizes the excellence in environmentally sustained operations spanning energy and water conservation, waste management and community engagement. A slight look ahead. We believe that FY26 marks a transition from a phase of transformative to a high growth. The year has already started strong with Q1FY26 tracking almost a double digit growth and more with strong demand tailwinds continuing in domestic circuits and tourism.
A strong robust pipeline of resorts. At least 14 more resorts that will have a year round kick in of revenues this year. Core investments already done. We are confident that of delivering another year of strong growth and results and value creation for Sterling as a brand and as a company. Thank you so much. Thank you. Over to you Ram for your opening remarks please.
K S Ramakrishnan — Chief Executive Officer of DEI
Thank you very much. Thanks Vikram and good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is KS Samhrishan. I’m the MD and CEO of DEI as mentioned by Mahesh in the beginning, DEI has had a fairly challenging year in 2025. Almost everything that had to go wrong went wrong. From the weather not playing up in the first quarter to the challenges of the geopolitical situation in the Middle east. That lasted nearly up to two quarters in the beginning of the year. And to add to it, we saw that and also took some conscious calls on our cost and trying to make more profitability as our focus.
We added the closure of US operations that went on. Another thing that was very unnatural in the year was having two Ramadans. In this calendar year we had two Ramadans. Middle east being the sizable portion of our business. Ramadan is the time when there’s low. So we had to face the Ramadan last year was in April 24th and this year was in March 25th. So both of the double dipped us. Hence I would also say the financial year 24 is not a very ideal comparison for 24. Having said that, if you go back to. If you go back to the quarter performance, our sequential quarter.
If I compare the sequential quarter it’s shown as the required results on all the corrections that we made from a revenue perspective in sequencing quarter from last sequence, the past sequential quarter to the current one we had from a some revenue. Although we dropped from 224crores per on an EBIT perspective, we increased our EBIT to 58 crores on the past quarter. I’m talking about October to December 24 versus January to March 25. Having said that, some of the cost controls that we’ve strongly implemented through have started showing up and that shows in this result in the quarter itself.
So if you think the quarter itself, the last quarter itself, while the revenue drop was 10% the EBIT has been fairly flat from a 222 crore revenue to 201 crore revenue drop to 1 crore. From an EBIT perspective, 7.9 crores are still remaining at 7.8 crores. We see this as a strong clear indication towards a very very robust financial year 26 at Krollability. Light on the fact that we also used this year to enhance our technology. I’m happy to announce that out of the 140 venues that we had, we had planned for rolling out a new technology.
We have rolled it across 38 venues across UAE, Maldives, Indonesia and Malaysia. After piloting the same in smaller venues, we launched the technology in bigger venues like Waterborne Bali and Atlantis Dubai. The new features of integrating the bar, erp, facial recognition, et cetera, have been very successful on the launch this month. We are going to see several more launches in bigger sites as we stabilize. The solution, the plant, the NIFI plant launches all the launches in the next three months. Not to just be over bullish about this, but we are running with the foreplan on our current revised plan rollout of DC and that puts us into a fairly good state to then benefit on our cost and performance which was planned.
The silver lining about all of this in the year, in the current financial year. In the financial year 2025, we’ve had more than 50 plus accounts renewed with a total value of 34 million. We had literally 100% renewal rate in the financial year. Also from a new account acquisition. We’ve acquired 30 new accounts, 10th amounting to about $11 million in revenue, 90 crores in revenue which also tells that Our financial year 26 will be fairly robust for future growth. Having said all this, we are pretty positive that in the new parties where they have signed up, we’ve opened up.
We are getting much more aggressive in our growth in China and the Far east where our margins have got slightly, much better. Some renegotiations at Sunglass, Disney and Universal have also helped us better our margins. These are. We will see the benefit of this coming through this year. That’s all from my side. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sejal, you can open the floor for Q and A please.
operator
Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Navid B from Novama Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Questions and Answers:
Navid B
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, sir. So my question is on the Sterling and DI segments. On Sterling, what are the guidance for room addition for FY26? Sorry.
Vikram Lalvani
Right, so okay, so we come here. I may just interject. So in FY25 we added 14 resorts that counted to about 600 to 700 rooms. In FY26 we are likely to open another 14 to 15 resorts and our room inventory should cross or should come close to 4,000.
Navid B
And just a housekeeping question. What was the average room rate for FY25?
Vikram Lalvani
This was close to 6200. 6262.
Navid B
Okay, thank you. On DEI, what is the margin Trajectory that we are likely to see over the next couple of years. We understand that this quarter we have seen some improvement in the margin. And do you see the segment as a whole growing on the top line basis also in say, you know, mid to high single digits?
Vikram Lalvani
Well, I think from a, from a top line perspective we will continue to deliver our growth as we’ve done in the past. From a margin perspective, we have bettered our costs. We have done some, we have, as I mentioned already, we have consciously taken decisions of not running profitable, non profitable businesses. So we closed that. So we assume that we’ll be continuing the current trajectory in the right form. And Debash, if you can add more if you want on this.
Debasis Nandy
Yeah, sure. Thanks. So in terms of the EBITDA margin, FY24, we had a 9.1% and that dipped to 6.5% FY25. For reasons which has already been explained by Ram, we expect the business to the worst is over in the business, as Ram said. And the business will go back to its previous levels of margins and with the higher levels of revenue, the overall profitability is expected to grow.
Navid B
And when you talk of the segment top end growing like what it has in the past. So which field are you kind of, you know, referring to? Because you’ve had like. Can you repeat that? So on dei, what kind of growth are you expecting over the next couple of years?
Debasis Nandy
Yeah. Are you asking which segment?
Navid B
No, no. Digital imaging.
Debasis Nandy
Your question is on the. On. Are you asking for a number?
Navid B
I’m just asking.
Debasis Nandy
I’ll make it simple. Ram, I think he’s asking for, you know, getting, looking for some sort of guidance so to say on what is the growth that we expect in the future as far as the top line.
Navid B
That’s correct. That’s correct. That’s correct.
Debasis Nandy
Without referring to a specific year, without referring to a specific year in general, we expect that to grow at least around 12% on a compounded basis.
Navid B
That’s helpful. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants that you may press Star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Akshay from RSPN Ventures. Please go ahead. Hi.
Akshay
Thank you for the opportunity. My question is on the sterling results. So despite the increase in the number. Of rooms and increase in the FNB. Revenues, we have seen a flat tip. Revenue for Q4 and a dip in EBIT margins. So can you please explain that despite. This growth, why are we flattish for Q4?
Vikram Lalvani
Okay, let me, I Mean, my name is Vikram here. In fact, some of these aspects I did cover in my commentary. But I will repeat that now the inventory addition that’s been happening, it’s been happening in a phased manner and it’s not a full year inventory addition. As I said, we opened our four new resorts during even Q4, of which one was JSL Mead, the other was even Amritsar. So one is these are staggered inputs that come now, number one. Number two, when you open a resort it takes at least a good 60, 90 days to attain a complete ramp in the resort.
So for which actually you do incur a little bit of input costs at least for the first 30, 60, 90 days before the whole thing ramps up. So that’s number two. Number three is the fact that as far as the we’ve also sunset the entire membership acquisition which actually had an impact Q4 of the previous year and Q4 of this year and that actually affected us by actually 15 to 20%. But we managed to substitute that with the scale that we managed to attain with the resort growth in FY25. Number four is that normally in Q4, seasonality from a leisure point of view is a slightly weaker quarter unlike Q1 and Q3.
Right. From a margin point of view in Q4 while the entire year is in line, we still maintained a good margin of 34%. Now there was a slight change as I said from last year same quarter on account of the fact that we did make some investments in onboarding leadership, number one. Number two, we completed our technology transformation journey actually in FY25 which will enable us scale even to about 100 to 150 without adding new scale to 100 to 150 results without adding incremental fixed costs. We had a one time provision in Q4 last year which accounted to about 20% of the differential.
And most important, we also continued to transition or reskill a large team of ours of membership acquisition into taking on new roles in the resorts that we were expanding into and in sales. So hence these actually impacted the Q4 results marginally. Most of them are one time issues. Fundamentally we are absolutely on track.
Akshay
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation, sir. I have a question on Sterling again, sir. What will be the impact of Nature Trails merger with TCIL and on the top line and any timelines for that?
Vikram Lalvani
All right, so I’ll start off with this and probably give it to my colleague Krishna Kumar as well. We completed this club sale in March. Now this actually includes three resorts close to Bombay. They account for about 80 to 90 rooms in terms of supply and they constitute probably about 10 to 15 crores in terms of a top line revenue. But having said that, from a sterling perspective this should be very easily substituted during the rest of the year
Akshay
. Okay sir, got it. And just one bookkeeping question on the other income side this quarter we have seen a big jump in other income. So is there any one off?
Debasis Nandy
No, no. I think that’s a consolidation question. So I take that. Right, you’re talking about the consolidation. Right. So. So for the quarter overall it has gone up from about. Gone up from about 287 million to about 529 million. And there are a couple of things. One is there are three things actually which contributed to this. One is the higher interest on the bank deposits. As you know that we have surplus cash which we invest in conservatively in bank deposits and mutual funds. So on the bank there is a significant amount of interest on the bank deposits.
That’s our 7 crores. Another 7 crores comes out of the exchange gain. You remember that you recall that last last quarter, which is the December quarter. We had explained during the analyst meeting that we had some exchange losses due to the strengthening dollar. Due to the dollar versus the various currency fluctuations. We have made up for that during this quarter. And there is an overall gain of about 7 crores. There is also the misremenic income also includes some degree of write back which Vikram has already explained that there is a about 5.3 crores of write back that has happened sterling and that finds place in other income.
So between these three it’s about 20 crores out of the 24 crores of increase.
Akshay
Thank you so much sir.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chetan from systematics chair. Please go ahead.
Chetan
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I have couple of questions on sterling. Firstly we have a target of around adding 20 resorts, around 900 rooms in the next one and a half year. Could you provide detail on the planned composition basically the target geographic locations for this expansion Ahead. The second question on Sterling again. So as we are aggressively expanding our resort count, so what strategies are in place to ensure that the ARR and the occupancy levels are maintained or ideally say improve then being diluted by the new inventory.
Vikram Lalvani
Okay, thanks. This is Vikram here. Again. I think these are very good questions. Number one, as far as our expansion is concerned we will continue to expand our network in the leisure space domestically. I think that’s the priority that we have in mind. We have strengthened as I Said our entire wildlife segment, we’re very strong in the hills segment, we have strengthened ourselves in the spiritual segment. And we are also seeing success in moving in those markets where there is a cusp of leisure and business. For example Madurai, Dehradun, Pokaro, Karwar and actually we’ve also just recently launched Amritsar.
But there’s been a blip in the last four to five days. So our strategy then is moving in that direction as well. So we will continue to be India focused and we will go where we are able to strengthen our leisure network as well as the tier 2, tier 3 towns where there is a cusp of leisure and business. As far as the ARRs are concerned, as you are highlighting just before I get into that, I just want to also reflect that if you see two years ago Sterling had hardly any presence in Rajasthan. And Rajasthan is a key market for leisure, for weddings, for mice.
But in the last two years we’ve actually scaled up to having nine resorts currently today in Rajasthan in all the key markets. And we are also for example fast expanding in Rajasthan. Our focus will continue to be even in Karnataka where we are fast expanding there as well. We are very strong in Tamil Nadu, Kerala. So we are going where also those markets where we have relative. So to that extent also the occupancies will be in line with supply growth and will not dip as a result. As far as the average rates are concerned, if we have been tracking stirring in the last two to three years, in fact pre Covid our average rates were close to about 3 to 3500.
We scale it up to 6200 as of today. So we have moved and we are moving the needle towards the upper mid upscale and the upper upscale segments and moving away from just the mid scale segments that we have. We’ve also while simultaneously ramping up the average rates, we have also ramped up the guest ratios over a period of time and that will continue to Happen. So number three is the investments that we’ve made in technology in FY25. All this is actually keeping in mind that when we are going to scale the company portfolio, we should not be adding incremental fixed costs.
For example the entire AI generated chatbots, for example the entire lead management systems, the distribution systems which will enable us connect to every travel point across not only in India, but globally as well and connect it straight to our inventory and rate management system. So that’s what we’ve actually put in place to ensure that these ramps happen quicker. And that’s our actually focus going ahead. I hope that answers your question.
Chetan
Yes sir, thank you. That answers my question and my second question is on dei. So I wanted to ask how is the company negotiating the contract terms to ensure profitable operations ahead particularly say in the new markets and how are we leveraging the learnings from the performance impact which we have seen in the past?
K S Ramakrishnan
Well, first and foremost, hi, this is Ramakrishnan from DEI how we are negotiating upon it. Obviously we’ve been in this business for over 18 years and every contract that is taken is done before through a feasibility study of what the potential of the partnership is or the market is or the particular attraction is. What kind of footfalls come there, what kind of pricing. We have various parameters that are taken and then there’s something called as market standards where the revenue share given are based on those. So there’s a very scientific method of giving this particular revenue share or offering the revenue share for you.
We always learn from our mistakes in the past. So whenever there is an area of drop, for example our business is divided into five seven different segments. We have water parks, we have tea parks, we have towers. There are categories of those. We also understand what the average spend of each of these categories are how much a person would spend on a picture. I can tell you that the average person spends of buying photographs when you go to a theme park is in Indian rupees go under 100 rupees per person attending the park Whereas when it comes to a tower it will be about 250 rupees per person attending park.
Based on these parameters is how we offer these revenue shares. Based on these factors we also make sure all our cost structures are structured around it. Having said that, how it’s going to be maintaining going forward this is purely market standards. As of now DEI stands as one of the most profitable surveillance imaging business across the world. There’s no other imaging company that’s near to us from our profitability perspective. Even from a top end perspective we are the number one by far today across the world as compared to a comparison of anybody else. So while we don’t focus so much on being on the number one position, hence we’ve taken conscious costs.
When the US became very expensive on cost, we decided to wrap up the operation. So we do learn from mistakes time and again. We operate in 22 countries so far we close two countries. So I think from a ratio perspective there’s a 10% trade off that happens whether it comes to countries or accounts on ongoing basis. But our inflow we always Work towards getting more in flow than the outflow. So we’ve signed in more businesses ever than lost businesses through our listings. That helps me give you a parameter how it works.
Chetan
Yeah. Thank you sir.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Yasho Vartha Nagrawal from IIFL Capital Services amc. Please go ahead.
Yasho Vartha Nagrawal
Yeah. Hi sir, thanks for the opportunity. I just have a couple of questions. First one is that what is the impact of Mahom on revenue and ebit? And if I remove national gains and Mahak contributions from revenue and ebit what would be the number look like for travel and related segment?
Mahesh Iyer
I’ll take that question. This is Mahesh here to first answer your question on Mahak. The top line income or revenue was roughly about 9 crores that we did spread across 2000 plus passengers that we managed for Mahakom. As you know and we’ve guided this before gross operating margins on the domestic business is roughly about 15%. So you can do the math around it as to what that number will be or the impact on ebitda. Coming to our second question on malice specific reference to the national gains, as I said, the total volume that we did in the current quarter was about 100 crores.
And roughly government business operates about 7, 7 and a half percent margin. And that’s the kind of uptake that we saw. I think it’s important to highlight here that the volume of government business that we did in FY25 was 50% of what we did in FY24. And clearly we’ll appreciate the fact that FY25 was a year of elections. Obviously the spends on some of these activities as much as as we speak we see volumes that there’s a lot of employees that are happening. We are participating in a lot of bids with the government be it KLO India Games or national games.
And as we called out again we also managed to pad all of the games that happen in New Delhi and with a smaller volume. I think these are these little events that are coming up and we are actually making a stride in the government business.
Yasho Vartha Nagrawal
Thank you and good luck.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Advait Lata from Nippon India Mutual fund. Please go ahead.
Advait Lata
Yeah, sir, congrats on a great set of numbers. Just wanted to ask of the cash. Balance, what is the float number? And the second is are the margins in the forex business, do you think these are steady state margins or do you think there will Be some changes going forward.
Debasis Nandy
Hi, this is Devashish. I answer part A of your question on the cash balances. The overall cash balances at a consultant level is about 2070 crores as of 31st of March of which about 1360 crores can be attributed to the flu. And about we have a gross debt of 240crores. And so you can also attribute that to the that you know you can net that off from that cash if you want to. And for the part B I would request my shoes. Otherwise as we’ve said before, if you look at and track the foreign exchange EBIT margins over the last few quarters, you see we put around the 40, 45% range and for the full year of FY25 we’ve actually come at the same level which is the five year business. So clearly the business will continue to operate at that kind of range which is the range between 40 to 45% there will be and as you would see in the Q4FY 2025 there is a conscious call that we took in terms of investment to the market trying to harness the potential of a big opportunity.
So we will make those tactical strategic calls which will have medium term or short term impact. But I think in the long term the 40 to 45% range that you said as the EBIT margin for the business should hold.
Advait Lata
Good. Right. So and just a follow on question on that. What would be our prepaid card market share in the entire market compared to banks etc.
Debasis Nandy
Let me put it this way. Currently the prepaid share there’s no official data that’s being published on this. These are information that, that we kind of collate from different competitors who operate in this space. The market is roughly about give or take $3.2 billion and we represent about 31% of that market.
Advait Lata
Right sir, thank you. And just a question for the travel segment. Which segment in the DMX is the fastest growing based on the event in that according to AGM players what is the traction there?
Debasis Nandy
These are different markets and each market are using for a growth rate. So it’s hard to put a in some quarters it could be, you know it will be a risk some other quarter, maybe something else. So I will not really, you know say one market is better than the other.
Advait Lata
Right. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of from Finance. 360. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity. So my question is on own business. I mean we are quite well diversified among in the whole travel ecosystem. We offer B2B we offer B2C we offer B2G and we are geographically also well diversified. But sir, if you see every quarter there are some challenges which we are facing. Right in the first quarter we had heat waves and election. In third quarter we had foreign exchange loss. I mean obviously it was minimal but it did impact our bottom line. So we were very confident in Q4 of FY24 about the growth.
But the kind of growth which we were expecting at that time didn’t came this year. So sir, despite us being so much diversified, what are the other things you are looking to minimize the risk? I mean we have geopolitical risk also which we are facing. And I just recall when we met on the capital market day you mentioned that there are lots of geopolitical risk which we are facing. Russia, Ukraine, we have Israel and Palestine and now India happens. So despite us being so much diversified, there are impact which we are seeing. So what are the strategy we are looking to, you know, minimize this kind of risk?
Mahesh Iyer
Thank you for the question. This is Mahesh here and I think the answer to the question lies in your question itself. Look, we have a geographical and a business spread and that kind of diversifies our risk. It has to come down and that is what we’ve actually reflected time and again. If there is one market or one season in a particular market that doesn’t work well, there are others in the group that stand out and deliver. I mean take the case in point for the Q4 FY25, the travel and the foreign exchange services fired very well.
Shirley Holiday Resorts had an excellent set of numbers coming in for Q4 Elvit in a seasonally, non seasonal quarter and Di continue to struggle for the full year. But as a group you would see that despite all these challenges, our revenue grew by a healthy 19% and the profitability grew by about 15%. And I think that reflects upon the strength of the brand, the diversification of our risk both geographically and as far as business. And I think that’s how we look at it. I would also like to add here that there are some of these factors which will be on us like a black swan event that happened during the pandemic or some geopolitical tension that will come up or the recent incident that happened in India.
I think these are events one can’t plan for. I think as a responsible corporate citizen, our strategy is to keep ourselves at risk of what’s happening, keep device strategies to minimize our risk, take care of our customers because we believe when a customer comes across to us. He’s coming to book a holiday and create a great experience for them and I think that’s what we are focused on. There will be events like that that will come and play out. I think as an organization, given the depth of our businesses and the strength of our leadership, we are much equipped to deal with the situation as they come along.
Unidentified Participant
Okay sir, got it. And sir, can you throw some quantitative and qualitative, a bit of a guidance about how the Forward bookings for Q1 is.
Mahesh Iyer
I think I’ll refrain from making a forward looking statement at this point in time. I can only say that our bookings are looking strong. There was a bit of a softness that happened post the April 22 episode. But I think the last two days post the ceasefire that has happened, we are starting to see the demand coming back. Our expectation that the business will grow at double digits and that’s what I can tell you, which will be more or less aligned with what the industry growth rates will be.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sir, got it. Sir, my last question is on again on Sterling. Sir, I do understand that we have been expanding since last couple of years but if you see. Sir, in industry there has been a lot of expansion but the growth rate we are, if you see the revenue, we are quite underperforming the industry. There are lots of players in the industry growing about above 15, 20% but still we find it difficult. So I understand that obviously when you open a resort it takes one and a half, two years to break even. But sir, everyone in the industry are venturing to new hotels or resort.
So why are we facing, I mean is there anything which we are facing an industry leaders or other players in the industries are not facing?
Vikram Lalvani
Okay. I think let me answer that one is yes, we also do compare ourselves with the other listed companies that do declare results. One of the key aspects one needs to know is that Sterling has been a pure play leisure player and leisure does face seasonality pressures unlike a typical hotel in a city. Having said that, even another gentleman had asked what are we doing about risk and etc. Having said that, we are also de risking and moving towards the tier 2 markets where there is a cusp of leader in business where our strengths lie. And I mentioned that as well.
Number three is if we see Sterling over the last four to five years we first transformed our business model from a vacation ownership, membership driven model into a hospitality model. And while we transformed the company’s business model, we also transformed the business results in the company and that has kicked in and that will continue to kick in. Now in terms of percentage growth, obviously the portfolio variations will matter. We are not in the luxury segment. As I said, we have moved from a mid market to an upper mid market, some in upscale and some in upper upscale segments as well.
So that transformation has also taken place. Place. Having said that, I don’t think you need to look at only Q4. In Q4, 13% is a healthy growth, 34% EBITDA is still solid and above industry average. Even if you see from an average perspective, industry runs between 30 to 32%. And as I also mentioned before that we will continue to be in this range of 32 to 35 and that’s. Where you will be. So while we are transforming, we’ve also grown and we are also scaling and ramping. So I think the effort has been phenomenal. The point over here in terms of comparing ourselves with others, I think if we have to see even in the first nine months of the declared results amongst all the stiff companies, means if you compare ourselves with what it was say three years or four years ago, today in most of the parameters we are in the top 10. And I think that’s where the change has taken place and that’s where the change will take place.
Our EBITDA margins will continue to be strong. Our EBITDA per room and PBT per room will continue to be strong and we can actually have that tuning compared to with some of the others who claim to have portfolio strength even larger than us. I hope that answers your question.
Unidentified Participant
Okay sir. And sir, last small suggestion. I don’t know what part of our revenue comes from the Turkey market, but it would be really a very patriotic move if we cut short the kind of packages we offer to domestic customer portal. The that’s all from my side. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Praneet who is an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Praneet
Hello my husband. Thank you for the opportunity. So regarding BI solutions, according to comment you mentioned that US operations have closed due to cost constraints or whatever, profitability constraints. But in previous commentary the management has mentioned that US is supposed to be a growing market for them in terms of growing the top line or bottom line. So since US has been shut down, where are we seeing this growth from? Which countries are we seeing? Since we are already very we are one of the largest players, how do we plan on growing in terms of are we planning on acquiring market share through more contractual leaders taking from other companies or are we planning on going to the new resource that are opening up and how is the overall demand and onboarding scenario there?
K S Ramakrishnan
Okay. Hi, this is Ramakrishnan and let me get back the reason, let me make it clear. The reason we closed our operations in the US was the US market was getting extremely expensive from a labor perspective with the law coming up for every state being different, hence the profit. Our profitability was we were not prospective, hence we had, we closed the US Talking about where exactly we see expansion. Our expansion historically from the past has been seen between the Middle east and the Far East. To throw some market names, it is Saudi Arabia which is fast growing up and we are expanding there pretty well.
We have signed up if not 50 or 70% of the prospective attractions are coming up in Saudi Arabia. The other markets are Far east itself. Indonesia itself and Malaysia has been our growth market for the past four years and we’re continuously growing up in that region too. In terms of how do we go about it, there are two forms of acquisition that we have. When a new attraction opens up, we bid for it through an RFP process. If an existing attraction has a current operator, we bid against them when it’s due for renewal. We do not go directly and we normally do not go in between an existing operator’s contract to negotiate and get the terms back.
But that’s. We see that as a dampener on our profitability. If that answers what your question is.
Praneet
Yeah, that helps. Thank you. And I have a few questions regarding the DMS business of us. So basically as I understood, the DMS B2B business is basically as providing some services to travel agencies and all of those other third party services. But I’m curious on how do we onboard these B2B competitor, B2B agents and all of these people and do we actually work on a commerce group brand? I understand we work through SITA and TCI in terms of growing this particular B2B business. So can you give me more context on how you’re planning on onboarding and with the new, there’s a lot of venture funding that has happened to travel over the last few years since COVID due to the prospective opportunities.
So how are we navigating through this? Because at the end of the day these new companies are also taking market share. I understand the market is growing, but how do you see the overall demand situation and supply situation in terms of this particular TMS division internationally and in India?
Debasis Nandy
Okay, thank you for the question Devashish here and I’ll try and answer. There are multiple parts of your question and try and answer all of them. You are Broadly right about the business model. It’s a B2B model where we tie up with overseas tool operators. The way it works is that we will create white labeled customized tools for the overseas tool operator based on their specific requirement. And he will sell the same tool as a branded tool to his customers under his own brand. When those customers come in, the individual customers come into the country, whether it’s India or elsewhere.
We will service them from the time they land till the time they get onto the plane again. And this will take care of the hotel, the sightseeing, the tour guides, at times the food, so on and so forth. So the way we usually tie up with large tour operators overseas with well known names and to ensure that the business is on a good footing and the business is rest free. We do. This business in India and as you know in several other countries we do not use the samarscupne. We are licensed to use the Samark name in three countries, India, India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. And overseas we do not use the Thomas Cook name. Honestly, you know, Thomas Cook is. The Thomas Cook brand doesn’t align with the dms. It’s not known for DMS operations and therefore we find it better to work with the local brands because these are easily 40, 50 year old brands, most of these, and therefore they have their own recognition in their respective markets.
For example, if I take Lip Pro, it is about 50 year old brand now. Asian sales is close to about 25 years, so on and so forth. So these brands have their own recognition in terms of how to grow this business. It is about doing more of the same in the sense that tying up with more operators, be it in the countries where we already are operating or looking for new display, for example, the business is very strong and I’m talking globally, not any particular market. Globally we are very strong in capturing operators from Europe or usa.
We are now spreading into South America, trying to capture the markets of Brazil and Argentina, not necessarily for India, but also to get into the other parts of the world where we operate. Did I miss out anything. Regarding the competitive landscape? Because there’s a lot of venture funding that happened in terms of the space. So I was wondering how we are navigating that particular thing because even though demand is growing, supply has also been growing. I understand recently there’s been some consolidation on all of them. But can you give you like outlook on how the industry shaping up to be? I think if you see the results for the past few years, the growth has been pretty strong. You know, it’s on an average about 30%. If you look at our DMS business specifically it has the growth actually has been from where we were in 2017 when we took the units over to now. The growth has been actually been phenomenal. But we are not saying that we replicate that growth year on year. The current year growth has been about 23% at the overall level. But in the longer run it can easily see a 15% plus growth.
When you’re talking about the new startups, etc, I guess those are more of nature B2C rather than a B2B. So we are B2B operators and not B2C. If you have any specific B2B operator in mind, maybe maybe it will help you to answer your question.
Praneet
No, actually I don’t have any specific B2B in mind. And since the B2B operations are mostly tying with the two operators, are we also tying up with these new age startups because they’re mostly B2C and we’re just providing the back end services of these people? Are we tying up with these new age startups and online for startups, how is that going? And in terms of just. I wanted to understand the motor of this business in terms of transmit because we’ve been able to grow this well at a decent scale despite the high base. I was wondering what is the incentive for other operators to take our vital product? What is their cost benefit and what is their gross margin or EBITDA margin on these particular products?
Debasis Nandy
I think the key move that we have is technology. So once we took over these businesses and outstanding the existing business, we have upgraded our technology substantially. This business used to be very manual in nature in the sense that the way it’s operated is that the overseas operator would ask for a quotation and with quotation we’ll ask for itinerary, we’ll create an it, offer a quote and there’ll be a bit of to end draw before things get finalized. And obviously this used to happen over mails, emails and therefore it will take its own time. And what we have done today is very different is that we have upgraded the technology so that it gives the opportunity to the overseas operator, our customer, to sort of log into our system and look at the rate that you’re offering for various hotels or various sightseeing, so on and so forth.
And we have both dynamic and static rates that are available and therefore we can quickly figure out what it will cost to sort of create and create. And we have custom, we have some standard templates or itineraries that are already in the system, if you want something customized, he comes back to us, he leaves his requirement on the system and we can quickly get back to him because everything we are also connected to the hotel to the same set of software. This is not something that everybody has and therefore I think the big advantage is that the tat the turnaround time is very, very quick and it leads to efficiencies in the entire process.
In terms of margins, typically the business operates, business operates at a margin, gross margin of about 15, 16%.
K S Ramakrishnan
If I can comment Praneet, I also would like to add to what Divashi said. I think while technology is one important lever and mode for the business, the other is our ability to buy together as a group. I think if you look at the three big markets, which is Lit Fluorides and Adventures and Asian Trails and combine that with the outbound business from India which is SOTC and Thomas Cook. I think what we’re doing is we are buying from concerted set of suppliers in the market. Maybe some of the larger hotel groups, some of the larger airline companies and stuff like that.
So when you go and do this bulk buying, it also brings efficiencies in scale and I think those are the factors that play as which allows us to put a much better pricing to the customer which also then allows us to win business in the marketplace.
Praneet
Understood. So basically we’re saying that technology, mainly because of the turnaround time and because of the manual intensive nature, Thomas Cook is able to scale the revolution in this particular aspect. I was wondering if there are any other players at similar size as us.
operator
Sorry to interrupt sir. I would request you to rejoin the queue for your follow up question. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepak Lalwani from Unified Capital. Please go ahead.
Deepak Lalwani
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. So first question is on Sterling. We look at the revenues of the FNB that has grown. I’m assuming the room revenues also would have grown. So is the accounting related aspect regarding the membership sales that is that the reason why the top line was flat this quarter and if you can quantify how much for membership sales that have not been accounted for in this quarter.
Vikram Lalvani
Yeah. Hi, Deepak Lalwani this is Vikram Lalwani here and glad to speak with you again. I think your question was on two parts. One is yes, there has been FNB growth. Fnb need not 16%. I also recollect your question in Q1 when we grew only at 6% in terms of F and D. Now in terms of the fact that we have for the Entire year round we grew at 16%. Now FNB has two components. One is since we are mostly in leisure destinations, a large component of it comes from resident guests. And when we sell to resident guests we sell it as a composite package, say 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 depending on which includes maybe one or two meals.
So to that extent there is a dependency on the resident guests and which is why I said the in house participation and the improvement of the in house participation is one of the factors that led to this growth. Number two is when we’ve expanded as I said in markets like Madurai, Bukaro etc. Which has a cusp of leisure and business a lot of them also have non residential FND component in it which has also now started kicking in. Obviously Weddings and Mice which has impacted in Rajasthan because we’ve expanded Rajasthan also has had an impact.
So FND is continuing to be a strong focus as far as the membership is concerned. The impact if you’re talking about it be could could be approximately 3 to 4 crores. Because from an India’s perspective. But having said that we are still servicing our existing members. We have only stopped the acquisition of new members and when these members also travel into our resorts they do spend on ancillary services including fnp.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay. And sir, on the cost side is there any related cost that you know that that got booked in the PNL because the membership sales or leadership. I understand but any other that could be one off and cannot that will not repeat in the future.
Vikram Lalvani
Yeah, so as it mentioned that the since we you know sunset the acquisition of membership there has been in Q4 of last year there has been a. We were actually at that point in time ramping down. So there were some numbers there. So talking from a differential perspective, you know on the data must have been about 15 to 20% as I mentioned. But in terms of the fact that you know we had still people with us it was important that we reskill them. Obviously the same people were not generating revenue for the quarter. But we use that to reskill and redeploy them in aspects disregard or relates to the results.
That’s the call that we have taken and that’s why there has been a one time slight impact in Q4.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay, fair enough. Understood. And.
operator
There are couple of guys waiting in Cube and you’re closing out almost. So can you give the others a chance please?
Vikram Lalvani
Sure.
operator
Thank you. The next follow up question is from the line of Naveen bait from Nirvana Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Navid B
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity Again, so you mentioned that one of your moat is technology, especially in the travel business. But could that not be a double edged sword in the sense that what kind of thread do you see from, you know, from AI?
Debasis Nandy
I request Mahesh to answer that question.
Mahesh Iyer
Naveen. I think when you look at it’s not in isolation, it’s not a single variable that when we speak about technology it’s never means to the end. It’s something that enables customers to transact seamlessly with us, allows multiple distribution points to be connected, gives them seamless experience. We also will appreciate that when you talk about holiday packages. It’s a high touch experience driven business. And in that what technology does is gives the information on a readable format in a much better presentable format. And I think that’s what it does. But if you look at a market like India and if you were to look at an international holiday, you have to navigate the first big challenge, which is visa, what kind of documentation you want to put it through to ensure that your visa comes through right.
And that’s the last thing you want to go wrong when you’re planning. So I think there is high touch in it and I think that’s the point Debash is leading to. There is a set of people and touch that is there in the business and there is technology to smoothen out. And technology plays a more important role in getting to as to how customers will interact with us. How can I get across to a lot more customers, give them information on the go, on their handheld devices, through other WhatsApp or chatbots and stuff like that.
So I think technology is more like an enabler to the business and not necessarily an in route. We believe that Both in the B2B and B2C businesses we use technology for different reasons. In the B2C business it’s more about driving customer conversions, customer conversations. And I think that’s what our focus is in the B2B side of the business, it’s more about improving productivity, trying as we are improving our tat’s in terms of quoting to our agent partners and stuff like that. So it’s a mix of both. And as a travel company we always maintain that we operate a hybrid model.
There are physical expansion of stores and I alluded to that point in terms of our distribution reach that we expanded in FY25. We continue to invest in technology also. So it’s always going to be an and game and not an or game. Talking about AI in specific, it’s not something that we are Ignoring, we are also investing in AI. You would have heard about me talking about Drew AI, which is specifically on the corporate travel segment where it enables customers to seamlessly manage their ticket booking, scheduling, rescheduling and stuff like that. It’s currently at a POC stage and we will do a commercial rollout somewhere in Q2 of FY 2026.
We also have our AI chatbot for our holiday business, which basically allows customers to interact with as if it’s talking to a human being and enables them to convert a lot of those conversations into conversions. I think that’s where we are at. We’re trying to use the best of both technology and human being in creating a good value proposition for the customer.
Navid B
Thank you, sir. Thank you. That’s helpful.
operator
Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mahesh Iyer for closing.
Mahesh Iyer
Thank you, gentlemen. I’d like to once again reiterate that we had an excellent FY25, aided by strong performances from our travel, foreign exchange, sterling holidays and to some extent from dei also helped with some of the difficulties that they faced during the year. As I mentioned, we committed to growing this business. We see all opportunities. There will be some headwinds that will come along the way, but I think as a management, we are well diversified both in terms of geography and in terms of product portfolio. And I believe that FY 2026 will be a good outcome similar to what we delivered in FY 2025, irrespective of some of the challenges that you will see in the near term horizon.
Thank you so much for joining our call. I really appreciate you talking to us. Thank you.
Debasis Nandy
Thank you.
operator
Thank you on behalf of Bhatriwala and Karani securities India Private Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.