Oct 19, 2024 / 11:00AM GMT
Avijit Vikram - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Head, Investor Relations
So good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Avijit Vikram, Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Limited, I welcome you all to the companies quarter two FY2025 earnings webinar. (Event Instructions)
Joining us today from the management side, we have, Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, Wholetime Director; Mr. Jitin Diwan, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Strategy Officer.
Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number 3 of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks. Thank you and over to you sir.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Thank you, Avijit. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the IndiaMART's quarter two FY25 earnings webinar. We have circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our own website as well as both the Stock Exchange websites. We are sure you would have gone through the presentation and we would be happy to take any questions afterwards.
IndiaMART has delivered consolidated revenue from operations at INR348 crore in quarter two, representing a year-on-year growth of 18%. Collections from customers have grown by 6% to INR356 crore on consolidated basis, whereas the deferred revenue grew by 19% to INR1,483 crore on consolidated basis.
Unique business inquiries grew to 28 million representing year-on-year growth of about 14%. Our total paying suppliers have grown to 2,18,000. We continue to see more than anticipated churn on the customer base in the silver bucket.
As a result, we have added 2,400 customers this quarter, which is a slight improvement over the 1,500-odd customers that we added the last quarter. However, as I said, the anticipated churn continued to be elevated and we are working on that.
Our platinum and gold customers base, which constitutes about 50% of our customer base and 75% of revenue continue to have a very low churn and continue to be very stable. We continue to take measures to refine the matchmaking and enhance the overall user experience and engagement on the platform. Now I will hand over the call to Brijesh to update about Busy Infotech. Thank you and over to you, Brijesh.
Brijesh Agrawal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Wholetime Director
Hi, good evening everyone. Busy has done a net billing of INR17.1 crore in this quarter. This represents a YoY growth rate of 17%. The revenue from operations has grown by 19% YoY to INR15.3 crore. The deferred revenue has grown by 40% to INR53.3 crore.
The net profit for the quarter was INR2.5 crore. During this quarter, we've sold 8,000 new licenses and the closing count of total licenses is about 3,81,000 licenses and this is at the end of September '24. The overall performance has been in line and we are focused on increasing our growth rate in the coming quarters. With this, I'll hand over the call to Jitin to discuss the financial performance.
Jitin Diwan - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Brijesh. Good evening, everyone. I'll take you through the financial performance for the quarter ended September 2024. Consolidated collection from customers was of INR356 crore in the quarter representing Y-on-Y growth of about 6%. IndiaMART's standalone collections from customers from the quarter were around INR337 crore, registering Y-on-Y growth of 5%.
The standalone revenue from operations stood at INR332 crore, registering Y-on-Y growth of 18%. Our growth in revenue was primarily driven by around 14% improvement in realization from paying suppliers and remaining by increasing number of paying suppliers.
Deferred revenue stood at INR1,483 crore, an increase of 19% on Y-on-Y basis. EBITDA of IndiaMART's standalone business stood at INR120 crore, representing a margin of 36%. As we mentioned in our last call, current expansion in margins is primarily due to saving arising from lower customer acquisitions, certain cost optimizations, and operating leverage.
As and when there is an increase in customer growth, we anticipate that margin will align with the gradual operating leverage inherent in the business. Consolidated net profit for the quarter was about INR135 crore. Consolidated cash generating from operations was about INR103 crore. Consolidated cash and treasury balance stood at INR2,449 crore as on September 30, 2024. Thank you very much and now we're ready to take any questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator(Operator Instructions) Vivekanand, Ambit Capital.
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
So my question is on the collections trajectory. I think till last quarter till 1Q, collections growth was in the range of around 15% to 20%. Now it has dramatically slowed down to only 5% on the standalone business. I understand that you are facing very high churn at silver level, and that's been the case for a while now.
So why is it that collections got impacted so adversely this quarter even though it was holding up strongly in prior periods, was there anything specific this quarter that weighed on collections? And if you can give us some more insights into how to project collections?
Or how do you yourself look at collections here on, given that churn appears to be a chronic problem rather than something that you can address? That's question one, very lengthy one. So I'll ask my second one only after the answer to this question.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So as I have been telling in the last couple of quarters that if the customer Increase in the net customer base continues to be flattish over a longer period of time, it will start to reflect in the collections as well as in the revenue. However, this particular quarter, even we have been taken a little surprised negatively on the only 5%, 6% collection growth.
We still tend to believe that this is one-off, some of our execution issues, some of our sales execution issue. And we believe that we will probably bounce back, if not towards 15%, 20%, at least try to be in the double-digit-plus collection growth going forward. But until and unless we fix the channel position structurally, I think we must not anticipate more than 10%, 15% of the collection growth in the times to come.
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
Okay, thanks. My second question is on the -- again, on collections, but a different one. So what proportion of your collections are coming from silver monthly and gold and platinum. Is it possible for you to explain that? And is there any color you can give on the growth in the collections bucket across these three tiers? Thank you.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So as I said, gold and platinum on the revenue side, they contribute about 50% of the customer base and 75% of the revenue realized. On the collection front, though we internally do track on every segment of the customer vertical collection and what is the average collection per customer per month. But we have not been releasing that data publicly.
But in general if you see, our revenue and collection today, if you take a six months moving average period, they are mostly in line. So you can safely assume that even the collection from customers from gold and platinum would be in the range of between 70% to 80% from this 50% customer because the customer set for the collection and for the revenue will remain the same.
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
Okay. So does this mean that the ARPU increase that you are seeing on a collection basis, I know that the ARPU you report in that slide pack, slide number 31.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
That is on revenue basis.
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
That is on a revenue basis, right? So on collection basis, this does seem to suggest that you maxed out potentially increase prices from gold and platinum. Is that correct inference?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
I would not tend to believe that immediately based upon this one single quarter of performance. I think it could be a few clients here and there where the overall -- and obviously, the average collection per customer, the overall collection itself is 5%, 6%, growth and total number of customers have grown by 4%, you can assume that the average collection per customer has grown only by 2%.
But that simply does not mean that this is the maxed out and this is the trend. So I refuse to believe on that. And if this is the similar trend for the three quarters in a row, then yes, but I think we will try to reverse that next quarter onwards.
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
Okay. No, what seems odd to me is that the prior quarters, you had collections growing fast despite your net adds being under pressure, and this quarter, it seems like your collections growth appears to be more impacted by upgrades perhaps getting affected due to persistent churn being elevated. Anyway --
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
You're asking the same question again and again, we'll not --
Vivekanand Subbaraman - Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
No. I mean it is very perplexing to us because all of us had a certain view of this business, the earnings multiple that we assign to the business is based on certain trajectory, now it has turned out very differently.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Okay.
Operator
Swapnil, JM Financial.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
My question is pertaining to the previous participant's question, where you mentioned that 5% collections growth could be a one-off and there could be some improvement going ahead. I would want to go back in history and ask you and because we have limited history since FY20, right, on a quarterly basis, and this is the slowest growth during that -- since your listing ex of COVID.
Have you experienced a similar growth trajectory in the past? And have you been able to reverse that trajectory? And how long did it take for you? If you can give some precedence of similar growth rates in the past, barring maybe 2008 crisis, I mean, when the economy was stable.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yes, I am giving you. We come back to your answer. I'll give you that answer, but please go ahead with your next question here. I'll come back. Because this is a very interesting question, and I definitely want to answer that.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Sure. So the next question would be on your churn rate. If you can just break it down, the way you have been doing off let on a category basis. If you could help us like how that has moved this quarter, has there been any increase in churn rates, especially in the upper tier categories?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
No. I think we have actually rather improved. So if you really see last quarter, we had dropped -- so quarter four is generally very good on the gross as well as renewal -- the quarter one last year, I mean, last quarter, which was April, May, June, we came down to about 1,600 customer net customer at. This quarter, it is about 2,400. One day here and there could make a difference of maybe 200, 300. So on a very fractional basis, I think we have improved.
But that number is not really significant enough to talk about until we see a permanent two, three quarters in a row improvement on that. So the churn continues to be stable, but maybe a few basis points, it has improved.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Will it be possible for you to give it in absolute percentage terms?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
I've been giving you the same numbers. So on the platinum and gold, we continue to be healthy, but approximately at 1%; on the silver annual, about 4%; on the silver monthly, about 6% to 7%.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Got it. And the other question is with respect to your traffic growth. Now obviously, different metrics have played differently this quarter. unique business inquiries appear to be okay. But then if you look at the total business inquiries delivered, they are down 7%. Then your overall traffic growth itself is flattish. I mean, how should we read this? I mean --
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So I've given this answer earlier also. So one is this traffic growth, over the time, we have realized that the way traffic is being calculated in the era of web components and a lot of web crawling happening and search engines and ChatGPT and others, I think the web traffic to differentiate the real user traffic versus that, that accuracy number is going down and down and down.
I mean, while we try to represent as much as possible, the real user number, but the number of bots have suddenly increased and the number of scrapers have suddenly increased. That is why the reliance purely on the traffic number or purely on the registered user number is very difficult.
That is where, if you remember, about a couple of years ago, we started to report this active buyer in the last 12 months. that number, so to give you more realistic picture, what is the real people who are actually making inquiries.
Similarly, the unique business inquiry, on the business inquiries delivered side, I have always been saying that we continue to make changes. Earlier, we used to share a buyer's detail with almost like six suppliers on an average. While we tried to reduce that towards 5, 5.5, now we believe that since the churn is very heavily stubborn, maybe there is a room for reduction of the competition and reduction of the number of suppliers per buyer, and that is why we are moving more towards four suppliers per buyer.
So the number of inquiries, business inquiries delivered will continue to decline in a shorter period of time. So these are the three numbers that we give you four numbers to be able to navigate what is right and what is wrong.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
But to put it this way, if you -- while I get your logic why you're reducing your inquiries to a limited number of suppliers, will not that affect the actual inquiries that a typical supplier would get? I mean on an absolute basis and that --
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
It will. In the short run, it will, but it should improve his conversion -- it should improve his effort to ROI. The currently, what might be happening -- and this is a hypothesis based upon certain people that we have met. They are saying that don't give us 100 inquiries, give us maybe 50, but give us the ones which are more relevant and more converting for me.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Got it. And any chance of your A&P spends going up now that we are facing challenges on collections as well as suppliers, both, any remedial measures have you thought about that?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Any chance of?
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Increasing your A&P spends. Maybe that could be the one that could help you.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah, we are working on that. As soon as we are ready, we'll come back and let you know.
Swapnil Potdukhe - JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Got it. If you can just answer my first question, that will be helpful.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah, I think I'm not able to find handy. I definitely remember in FY19, we were actually at about 15%-odd growth rate, 12%, 15%-odd growth rate. On a quarter on quarter, I think we have faced this challenge at least third or fourth time in the history. And this is probably one of the longest eight quarters that it has taken us to -- because the size has also become bigger.
But otherwise, we have always found ways and means. Maybe we'll take one step back to find a way back because so many categories and so many -- such a large business and such a great future ahead of us. If we won't grow, I mean, even Google should not grow.
I mean if there is a strategic issue because strategically, we are almost a small replica in our own world for Google. So from that perspective, I don't think Finding the right niche is important, but I think we will recover and we are quite confident of recovering.
So in FY17, our collections over FY16 was only 13%. And I don't have the real quarter-on-quarter data. But I think if the overall year was 13%, I'm sure there was one quarter which was single-digit growth percentage. Similarly, sometime around FY19 also '19 or '20, FY20 was 10% growth rate, whereas only last 15 days of the FY20 were pandemic-oriented, while even the quarter-on-quarter, I do remember that third quarter of FY19 was also similarly single-digit quarter.
So I think we have faced this -- and he is saying that other than pandemic. And even if I remember the entire FY12 and FY13, we were less than -- and that time, we were still trying to find the product market fit. So we will recover for sure.
Operator
Sachin, Bank of America.
Sachin Salgaonkar - BofA Securities India Limited - Analyst
Two questions. First, I wanted to understand a bit more on margins. Given that perhaps there's no near-term visibility on churn control, the net adds remained low. And on back of operational leverage, cost control, clearly, we're seeing quarter-after-quarter EBITDA margins going up. So is it fair to assume that margin should stabilize at 38%, 39% in the foreseeable future till we see all these issues getting resolved?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah, we have been telling, I think these are more to do with the numbers, timing of numbers. Jitin, can you highlight?
Jitin Diwan - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Financial Officer
Sure. So thanks, Sachin. So as you rightly mentioned that margins are elevated for the last few quarters. Because of the slowdown in growth, we are not able to add much of net adds and this quarter collection is also on the lower side. And that's how it is looking elevated.
So once we go back to adding customers and connection will also pick up, we will be back to our normal margins. Having said that, sustainable margin, what we said, we believe that it should be in the range of 34%, 35% and not 37%, 38%. So next quarter also, we will have our salary appraisals, which will have impact on margins as well.
Sachin Salgaonkar - BofA Securities India Limited - Analyst
Okay. But let me flip that question around a bit. I mean during COVID your margins were as high a 50% to 52%, what stops the margins are only at 36%, 38%. Why can't we at 40%, 45% in the near term? And even the normalized margins, I mean, the way cost control is happening, why should it be at 34% and not higher than that?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
We always say that one should take the collection to cash flow margin and that would be the long-term trending margin would be for the revenue to EBITDA. It cannot be different, so collection to cash flow has been trending at between 35% and 40%. This particular quarter collection to cash flow is hardly 33% or so. So collection to cash flow is the leading indicator of the margin.
What you see currently here, the revenue coming from the past, while the cost is current, so since the current revenue is at 18%, while the collection is at 5%, even during the COVID, I've been telling everybody that this is the worst ever quarter, but everybody said margins are doubling.
And during COVID a lot of costs were also cut down because rents were reduced by half, no transportation, no hiring, so they were like that. But these are not the times where we are going to cut cost to sustain the margin.
So as I said, we would be happy to report margins at around 33%, plus, minus 1%. But in the interim, while we try to do find the growth lever -- until and unless we find the healthy growth lever, there is no point of spending money. So that is what I'm saying.
If we find the handle on churn, I think we will go whole hog aggressive on the gross addition as well. And that will increase our first big time. So since we are not able to find the handle on churn, we are also going slow on the gross.
Sachin Salgaonkar - BofA Securities India Limited - Analyst
Thanks you. Very clear. And my first question -- second question is actually on some of the points you said answer to this question or to some of the earlier participants. When -- and one of the statements, perhaps you said that until we fix these issues structurally, so I just wanted to understand, sir, what needs to be done from a management perspective to fix these issues structurally?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So one is the execution side, which is the people and process side, the other could be product and product expectation and product outcome side. What is it that will bring the buyers back again and again, what is it that will improve the word of mouth, what is it that will improve the inquiry to conversion for suppliers, what is it that will improve the fulfillment for buyers.
And that is something which we found the product market fit in FY18 and then from then on, we have been doing minor, minor tweaks. There may be possibilities that while doing the minor, minor tweaks, there could be something that we missed probably.
And one of the things that we realized is that we have been always working on increasing supplier responsiveness and which is so high today that it may be acting against the buyers' interest or against the suppliers' own interest in terms of getting inquiry, but he's not getting conversion. And we have heard this by going to multiple suppliers, that inquiries are there, but I think it is difficult to become -- to mature the inquiries.
Buyers are also saying that the suppliers are there, but probably it is difficult to decide which supplier to settle with. So this is one of the things. And that structural finding is sometimes in front of your eyes, but you just keep struggling to find the right one.
Avijit Vikram - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Head, Investor Relations
So now we'll take a question from the chat box. The question is from Mr. [Dhiren Babaria]. So how do you see exports oriented suppliers and buyers for adding growth to business as China Plus One theme comes to fruition. And how or what are our plans to capitalize on these fronts?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Thank you very much. So just for the context, IndiaMART was an export import business to business marketplace since 1999 until 2009. And most of our -- 80% of our focus used to be exports. Sometime during 2007, 2008, 2009, we realized that India has become uncompetitive or less competitive in the world market as against China.
And we would probably like to focus on the domestic market. It took us sometime between 2009 and 2013, 2014 to find the product market fit for the domestic buyers and sellers. Ever since we have not been focusing on the export market.
Only in 2020, post the COVID pandemic hit, we found that still there is nobody else who is serving the export market well. And so we created a smaller initiative called IndiaMART Verified Exporter Program. And that has done well. But do I see a TAM of hundreds of thousands of crores there. I still do not see such a large TAM while I mean if you really compare the growth in the export market that still has been single-digit CAGR over the last 10-odd years or 15-odd years.
So while there is an opportunity to build maybe INR100 crore, INR200 crore, INR300 crore business, and out of that, maybe we are already doing INR50 crore, INR60 crore, INR70 crore of business. But will that become a INR500 crore or INR1,500 crore business, that is not something that we see immediately.
So I hope that answers your question that we are -- we now have a export offering ever since late 2020 or early 2021. And it is probably upwards of INR50 crore and below INR100 crore of revenue contribution to our business, but will it grow as rapidly as the domestic business, I'm not too sure.
Operator
Kaushik Suresh, Generation Investment Managers. We'll take question from another participant.
Nikhil Choudhary, Nuvama.
Nikhil Choudhary - Nuvama Group - Analyst
Just want to understand the collection number a little better. So collection growth for us was 5% YoY this time. And while you are attributing it to lower subscriber addition, even the subscriber count, total subscriber grew 4% YoY, right? So subscriber is not the only reason, which impacted collection. Correct me if I'm wrong because at least what we can sense is that revenue per paying supplier must have gone down as well, so collection to be at 5%. So can you give color what happened behind the scene? And why, let's say, revenue per paying supplier has grown down at such a pace in between the two quarters?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah. If you see the slide number 31, so let's understand the collection -- difference in collection and difference in the revenue. So if you see the revenue side, revenue is 4% growth in paying supplier and 14% growth in average revenue per supplier. Total revenue is 18% growth. So there is no calculation difference. On the collection side, 4% growth in customer and only 1% growth in average collection per customer, which is resulting into 5%.
Nikhil Choudhary - Nuvama Group - Analyst
Yes, sir. So why there is decline in average collection per customer? Any reason for that?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
I mean as I said, we have been growing at about 15%-odd in the past despite the fact that the number of paying suppliers have been growing at 5%-odd. In this particular quarter, we believe that there could be execution challenges in the pocket. We do not know if this is something that we can say that the average collection per customer will continue to remain muted. We will see if we can recover that back in the current quarter or next quarter. If that is not the case, then we can assume that this is a structural problem.
Nikhil Choudhary - Nuvama Group - Analyst
Sure, sir. Second thing, given the churn continued to remain elevated and since last many quarters, you have highlighted some of the initiatives you are taking, any update, anything which has changed on ground or we should assume this remains the case even in coming quarter?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So coming quarter, I don't think you will see a significant change, but because the amount of changes that we have done around two, three quarters, four quarters ago, they have not yet resulted into anything significant.
So I think newer initiatives that we are trying to take on the -- reducing the customer competition or the buyer side competition, buyer, seller side competition, as well as maybe putting some additional checks on spending our time, money, energy in terms of acquiring the customers, which are the more vintage customers are more evolved set of customers, that will take another two quarters or so to say if there is any significant results happening on that. Other than that, I do not have any other information to share with you.
Nikhil Choudhary - Nuvama Group - Analyst
Sure, sir. The last one is on unique business inquiry, 14% jump. I think, first decent jump after many quarters. So any color what is leading to the uptick in quarter two?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
I would say that there has been some effect of the -- if you would have noticed, we have started to collect inquiries also using WhatsApp on our mobile website. So that has given us maybe 1% or 2%. And so the conversion from the traffic to unique buyer. that has improved a little.
We have also -- we used to call the buyers whenever there was a half intent or a dropped intent buyer, that process also, we have moved towards to WhatsApp and RCS, that has lower cost and higher ROI. So that has resulted into some of this.
But this is too small a number to say because otherwise if you really see, it used to be in the range of [25 million, 26 million and moved to 28 million, whether it will remain 27 or 28, but I'm sure at least 1 million] per quarter growth has come because of the WhatsApp-led implementation.
Avijit Vikram - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Head, Investor Relations
So we have another question from the chat box. The question is from [Mr. Jigar Shah]. We are seeing Just Dial being very aggressive in customer acquisition. Also, we see more activity by TradeIndia, your initial competitor. Is competitive intensity hurting our growth?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
On the Just Dial side, I think if you really see the number of customer declined during the COVID time, and the recovery, I think they declined for a long period of time during both the COVID period, while we kind of remain more or less flattish during the entire COVID period. Only for the first quarter, we declined. So I think they recovered that post-COVID. While at IndiaMART, we moved from 1.5 lakh suppliers to almost 2 lakh suppliers quickly.
And in the last five, six quarters, we are now stagnating. I would say they woke up a little late. Whether they will face the similar challenge, that time will tell. But we are happy with whatever we have been doing and wish all the best to Just Dial for their own endeavor. We haven't heard much about Trade India. Trade India remains our distantly respected competition, whether it is Exporters India or TradeIndia, but no significant change that we have observed from them.
Operator
Kushagra, Old Bridge Capital.
Kushagra Bhattar - Old Bridge Capital Management Pvt. Ltd. - Analyst
Just two questions. Sorry to hop on the collections again. I'm just trying to understand your response in a better way. So given that gold and platinum are 70% to 80% of the collections, so the lower growth in collections actually has to come from lower growth in collections from the same gold and platinum customers, right?
So I'm trying to understand one of the reasons, which you laid out was more of a one-off and you mentioned some lapses in the sales execution. So maybe if you can give some more light as to what those lapses were and what are you trying to do about it, so that they don't happen again. That's my first question.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So as I said, in terms of improvement of sales efficiency to improve the collections on the shorter term, some of those things where we were not able to fill in the vacancies. Some of them are related to even the churn moment that we are having from silver to gold to platinum, I think the gold side, the lower part of the gold, which we call RASIL customer, there I think we are having certain set of challenges.
I would still say that please wait for next quarter or so to be able to really say that what execution challenges have we been able to fix because this 5% growth rate that is coming, some of that could also be the regional decentralization that we have been working on. We now have a regional structure, which is reporting into the central structure with each vertical of acquisition and customer support and the key client division.
But none of that should have resulted into such a sharp drop 5% growth coming from the customer and 10% growth coming from the collection. Together, they should have been plus, minus -- anywhere plus, minus 15%. This 5% is definitely not acceptable, but we would only know if this is one-off because the number of months that we have had is only two months so far.
Kushagra Bhattar - Old Bridge Capital Management Pvt. Ltd. - Analyst
Sure, all right. Second question is on a different note, basically, you generally don't fall out this metric, but do you sort of track your revenues or the money you are able to realize per unique business inquiry like if we do the rough math, basically, it shows that it has trended up. But given all these challenges, where do you think the money which you're able to realize per unique business inquiry is headed in the future?
Like is there a threat how much you can monetize or how much you can make per unique business inquiry going forward for all the challenges, which you have laid out and which we have been facing since the last seven, eight quarters. Yeah, that was my second question. Thank you.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So I think on the monetization side, the day we decide that now we have to maximize the monetization for every category, for every location, for every inquiry. Currently, we have been operating very largely as a horizontal marketplace with flattish pricing across the category, across the location, across the quantities.
The only thing that we have implemented in the last year, year-and-a-half, is all the newer sales in the platinum segment is being sold into two tier pricing with the normal and premium, where the premium has been assigned to certain 2%, 3% of the categories and the top tier cities.
I think there is enough room for a B2B marketplace or for B2C marketplace once it comes to maximize the revenue per inquiry in different segments. So if you really look at 1688 example, between 2005 and 2015, their customer base grew from almost 100,000 to almost 1 million, close to 1 million. But between 2015 and 2025, their ARPUs have grown considerably.
But I don't think we at IndiaMART have reached that level of saturation that we need to optimize on every location, every category. I think we are still in a growth phase, and we will continue to do that. Just like in Google if you look at the ad words, every category, you can do a bidding and do a demand supply based matchmaking, whereas in the beginning on the Amazon, whenever a new category is introduced is introduced at a flat pricing of 5% or so.
But over the time, when you -- when the competition heats up, you try to maximize the return per category or sales per category. And then on top of that, you make revenue from advertisement. So I don't think the monetization is per unique business inquiry is a problem. I think the top of the mind recall and the net promoter score of buyer and seller, that is the key metric for us in the midlife of IndiaMART.
Avijit Vikram - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Head, Investor Relations
So we have another question from the chat box. The question is from [Mr. Amrish Kukkar]. Can you share what is the current thinking on the strategic investments either in terms of adding as a service or potential sales, specifically for existing integrated services like LiveKeeping, can you provide some color on what the plan is?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Prateek, you want to answer that accounting (inaudible)?
Prateek Chandra - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Strategy Officer
So on the strategic investments, as we've stated that our core business proposition that was around the matchmakings and a little bit on the conversation side and the business software enablement for the different SMEs becomes an integral part for the SME ecosystem. And in order to enhance the value proposition there, we've been trying to explore different, different software and invested in the different software.
Accounting being one wherein we have a very high conviction and we have taken in huge bits on the accounting segment, one investment is Busy and the other investment has been LiveKeeping. So it's been roughly around three years that since we've made these investments -- 2.5 years that since we made these investments. And both of these investments are moving in the right direction.
In the terms of LiveKeeping specifically, when we acquired them, it was just a product that is just created. Over the years, we have worked on the scalability of the product. And now it is being used by more than 10,000-plus customers in total. So from 0 to 10,000 customers is what we've been able to achieve.
However, we still think that in the larger scheme of things, it still continues to be small as and when it kind of continues to grow well and becomes a little scalable, we would explore a lot more synergistic opportunities with the IndiaMART, which would become visible.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah, currently for Vyapar, Busy, and LiveKeeping all three of them, we are currently using IndiaMART as a channel for sales lead generation. I think it is in the near future that we would start to do a reverse as well whereas Busy customers or LiveKeeping customers can generate leads for IndiaMART as well.
On the Vyapar side, we have also integrated on the buyer side, where from within Vyapar you can submit a buy lead or RFQ to IndiaMART for current query. Similarly, from Shopify, we have an app where you can submit an RFQ on IndiaMART.
So this gives a holistic view on the about INR600 crore, INR700 crore that we have invested in the accounting software side. On the minority investment side, Prateek can also give you some color where are we? I think if you read the annual report that was released in the last quarter, that has a good section on that, but Prateek can elaborate more on as a strategy on that side.
Prateek Chandra - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Strategy Officer
On the sectors, other than the accounting, we still kind of continue to explore. Certainly, if you look at -- we've invested in the logistics SaaS that we had the three investments there. Distribution management, Bizom is the another one that's been kind of doing well, been progressing well. EasyEcom being more about the e-comm universe of the suppliers who want to do e-commerce, enabling their order management system, their warehouse management systems is what EasyEcom does.
And M1xchange is the other one, which has been doing well on the invoice discounting side. So these are again, if you see very, very different, different areas that we are trying to explore. And as and when, as I said, look, they continue to be small. As and when they grow bigger, we would see a much better synergies opportunities with them.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
I think four or five of them within last 2, 2.5 years have raised multiple rounds of subsequent capital after raising money from IndiaMART as well. So they are continuing to do well on that side as well.
Operator
Anmol Garg, DAM Capital.
Anmol Garg - DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
So a couple of things from my end. Firstly, you have talked about that you're not seeing much competition from Just Dial or TradeIndia, Exporters India. So is there any other channel which is from where we are seeing larger competition for example, B2B, e-commerce, or Facebook per se?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So I don't think we have faced any bigger challenge from or any bigger competition from any of the smaller Indian players that keep getting funded time to time. I'm sure each one of them are trying to solve very unique and very different problem for a specific industry or for a specific geography.
And we continue to study them and see what we can learn from them how we can partner with them. But as of now, we have not seen any particular customer who is mentioning that I left you because of XYZ competition.
On your other question, whether Meta or Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp, similarly, whether Amazon or Flipkart or Zepto or Blinkit, and thirdly, whether Google, these three continue to remain the bigger daddy at under which we try to find our own niche. So they are always a competition to anybody and everybody, all these three people.
And we continue to find a niche the kind of problem that they are not willing to or able to solve. And B2B is one such thing that neither Amazon nor Google and nor Facebook as a company has solved in a longer period of time.
And it is not only in India. Even worldwide if you really see, very little they have been able to gain. So I think they continue to be a threat and opportunity whereas looking at their revenues, you can find that if their B2C revenue is so high, how can you do B2B? But if you really look at the other smaller ones, they are all trying to generate some business, but still nothing has become anything to worry about us as a competition.
Anmol Garg - DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
Sure. Secondly if I have to break up our paid supply additions between gross additions and churn in this quarter, then would you say that on a quarter-on-quarter basis, you have seen some improvement in gross addition or churn has reduced from that perspective?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
So from the gross side, as I said, ever since almost like seven, eight quarters, we have remained at 90%, 95% of the gross addition and I have not pressed the pattern specifically to meet short-term net customer requirement by pressing paddle on the gross. My thing has been that try to improve the churn first before we go to 120% of our best ever gross addition.
So as I said last time also, we continue to remain at 90%, 95% of our gross addition. Whatever deterioration or improvement that you are seeing, it is purely and purely because of churn.
Anmol Garg - DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
Right. And as you have indicated that churn is more or less the same as the last couple of quarters. So from that perspective, for now, should we assume that the gross supplier additions would remain in the 2,000-odd range in terms of the additions on a quarter-on-quarter basis?
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Net supplier addition, yes.
Anmol Garg - DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
Sorry, net supplier additions.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Yeah, currently, it doesn't look like we have broken out of that 2,000 to 3,000 range bound figure. If you really look at the last five, six quarters, it has remained range bound between 2,000 to 3,000, I would love to go past 5,000, but we have not been able to. And until as we go past 5,000 on a consistent basis, we will not be unnecessary putting a lot of money in acquiring new customers to increase our gross addition.
Anmol Garg - DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
Right. And one last thing from my end. So if you can talk about ratio of inquiry to conversion for a supplier, then how has it changed over last few quarters? And just wanted to understand here the quality of inquiries that we are having right now.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
See that varies significantly from customer to customer, industry to industry, location to location. Certain customers are with very large order value like large machines and large projects are happier with 1% or 2% conversion, certain customers, which are able to do even 20% conversion.
So I think that varies significantly across different industries and geographies. I think the NPAs that we measure, buyer fulfillment rates that we measure has remained at 40%, 45% of the buyers who respond back to our feedback.
That is something, as an indicator that it has plateaued over the last two, three years. It used to be 30%-odd, 25%, 30%-odd pre-COVID, it moved to 40%, 45%, 40%-odd post-COVID, and now trending at 45%. But in the last three years, it has not really made further improvement. And also people's expectations might have changed. So we can clearly say that the importance of conversion is very subjective to each industry and each particular customer.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Dinesh Agarwal - Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining our quarter two FY25 conference call. We have tried to address your queries in the time available. But if you still have any questions, please feel free to contact us with our Investor Relations team, and we will try our level best to give you answers of whatever we could not answer today. Thank you. Have a nice weekend and Happy Diwali to all of you.
Operator
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, we now conclude this webinar. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.
Call participants:
Corporate ParticipantsAvijit Vikram, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Head, Investor Relations
Dinesh Agarwal, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Executive Director
Brijesh Agrawal, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Wholetime Director
Jitin Diwan, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Financial Officer
Prateek Chandra, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd - Chief Strategy Officer
Conference Call Participants
Vivekanand Subbaraman, Ambit Private Limited - Analyst
Swapnil Potdukhe, JM Financial Ltd - Analyst
Sachin Salgaonkar, BofA Securities India Limited - Analyst
Nikhil Choudhary, Nuvama Group - Analyst
Kushagra Bhattar, Old Bridge Capital Management Pvt. Ltd. - Analyst
Anmol Garg, DAM Capital Advisors Limited - Analyst
Refinitiv StreetEvents Transcript
Q2 2025 Indiamart Intermesh Ltd Earnings Call
Oct 19, 2024 / 11:00AM GMT
