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IndiaMart recently reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 56 crore for the fourth quarter ended March, down marginally from Rs 57 crore in the year-ago period. Its revenue from operations jumped 34 per cent to Rs 268 crore for the reporting period. It was Rs 201 crore in the corresponding period for the last year.
Dinesh Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, IndiaMart discussed the financial results with ETRetail.
Edited excerpts:-
How do you analyse the quarterly results?
We have been able to pick the growth as this was the charter for the year and we have invested in people across sales and service as well as channel partners and product and technology. We have added about 900 people in the last financial year and that is a pretty big number for a company of our size. This has resulted in better growth in terms of collections and deferred revenue along with revenue from operations.
Another important aspect for this particular year was to make sure that post acquiring Busy Infotech, we are able to transition from the older management to the newer management as well as induct people in order to improve sales in the areas unrepresented there.
In the last 18 months, we have been able to increase our customer base from 1,50,000 customers to 2, 03,000 customers.
Your profit remained flat for the fourth quarter. What do you attribute this to?
During the year 2020, we did not make any investments and we were, in fact, during a lot of cost-cutting wherever possible because there was too much uncertainty in the market and while our collections were lower, our revenue flows from the previous year, it looked like that the profits were very high. But if you look at the collection-to-cash flow ratio, it had actually come down and if you look at the cash flow metrics, we have actually done better year after year.
In FY21, we did hardly Rs 300 crore of cash collection and in this year 2023 till now, we have experienced Rs 475 core of cash flow operations as deferred revenue flows into the revenue while the expenses immediately reflect on the P&L. That is why there were inflated profit during the FY21 and that continued for FY22 and it could not scale further due to the second wave of Covid. Now, we have started to scale back, the cost being loaded upfront is reflecting while the revenue will follow through and that should take our margins back to the higher levels than pre-Covid probably closer to 30 per cent. Pre-Covid, our margins stood at 26 per cent. Which categories are seeing the maximum growth?
Industrial products, machinery, and planting machinery are our top categories followed by building and construction materials and related items. And the next top category is driven by e-commerce growth – packaging and printing materials.
The new categories which we have started focussing upon are exports and agro-based categories.
How many registered sellers and buyers do you have currently?
Currently, we have 170 million registered buyers, 7.5 million registered suppliers, and 95 million products live on our platform. They have been growing at a CAGR of 15-20 per cent year on year. We plan to maintain a similar growth rate for the next couple of years.
Apart from this, we have been able to increase the average revenue per subscriber to almost Rs 50 thousand.
How many paid subscribers do you have currently? And what steps are you taking to increase these subscribers?
We have 2, 03,000 paid subscribers and during the last quarter, we added 8,300 new subscribers. We plan to add upwards of 8,000 new subscribers every quarter.
Last year, we added about 33,000 new subscribers as against about 17,000 the previous year and as against 22,000 the year before Covid.
This year also based upon the similar run-rate, we are planning to add about 32,000 customers to the paid subscriber base.
Where do you see the company investing to increase the market share?
We already have a good market share and we continue to invest in channels. Last year, we expanded our channel dealership program and now, we have 150 dealer distributors available in 66 different cities and towns.
We have increased almost 3 percent market share in the tier 2 tier 3 towns as against metros. We will continue to expand pan India and penetrate deeper into categories. We will deploy technology in a manner that is easy for dealer distributors in tier 2 and beyond to adopt.
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