Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Bata India Limited Q3 and FY 26 earnings conference call, hosted by B&K Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation conclude. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then hash on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Akhil Parekh from B&K Securities. Thank you. Over to you, sir. Yeah, thanks, Danish. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of B&K Securities, I would like to welcome you all for Q3 FY 2026 conference call of Bata India. From the management side, we have Mr. Gunjan Shah, MD and CEO, Mr. Amit Aggarwal, Director of Finance, CFO, and Mr. Nitin Bagaria, AVP CS. Without taking much time, I would like to hand over the call to Gunjan for his opening remarks, post which we'll open the floor for Q&A session. Over to you, sir. Thanks, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Bata Q3 FY26 earnings conference call. We have Gunjan Shah, MD and CEO, and we also have Amit Aggarwal, Director of Finance and CFO, joining us. We have shared the presentation as a pre-read to the stock exchanges yesterday. I hope you had time to go through the same. We have already also shared the disclaimer, which is part of the presentation. I now request Gunjan to take you through the, you know, performance summary. Thank you. Thank you, Nitin. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining this call this quarter. We will do this slightly differently this time, in the sense that, while the presentation has been uploaded, and I'm happy to take any questions on it, many of them are consistent pieces that we have, you know, showcased over a period of time. So, I will not be taking through every chart. I will give you some opening remarks on the highlights that I see, and then, as I said, I'm more than happy to answer questions on the presentation or otherwise. So thanks once more, and we'll... So, we saw a turnover-led growth of about 3% this quarter, right? It's been welcome after some time. We do see signs of momentum and green shoots, as I mentioned in my release also. This was on the back of persistent implementation of the Zero-Based Merchandising project. Now it has scaled up to 400 stores, and obviously higher marketing spend. This is the second consecutive quarter that we have elevated our marketing spends. Double-digit growth on marketing spends itself, and we are seeing the results of that. We hope to continue that going forward. All the key metrics in ZBM have shown growth, as you would have seen in the presentation. And the overall margins growth is double-digit at 10% underlying PBT growth. Supported by various actions that we have talked about, including, but not only, the customer first. There are now tangible improvements that we can see in terms of turns, availability, turnaround time in terms of resupply to stores, and obviously a longer running project, which was rationalization of aged inventory. It is now at, as per our records, at very high levels now in terms of freshness. While overall growth was seen reasonably democratic across price points, so good to see even the lower price points doing better. But we did see, obviously, Hush Puppies, Power and Floatz, from a brand perspective, obviously driving growth disproportionately better. We also saw a significant turnaround. It has been under works for almost a year, but the corner stores channel, which was, in a way, rationalized and put on pause, is now showing both growth as well as extremely strong margin performance. So we'll see and hear a lot more of it coming in the coming years. As I talked about in the last quarter, the entire funnel for product creation, I had broached open that topic last time. I had promised you that I'll come back with a lot more flavor. We have shared with you now a lot more color and detail on it. Happy to answer questions, but you will see a lot more actions in the next few quarters, specifically focused on basically the product channel getting the product funnel getting reimagined. which we feel is a very, very strong pillar for our growth going forward. The franchise network continued to expand. Now we are at about very close to 2,000. Hopefully, this quarter, we should cross the 2,000 mark. IND Promise business continues to expand through the KRO network, which is now 2,000+, a significant addition of almost more than double in the last 1 year. And the last piece was on e-commerce. We saw strong growth coming back and across the channels, marketplaces, dot-com, as well as omni. We also have launched our Bata app, and now almost 14% of our D2C business on dot-com comes through the app, which is very encouraging within the first six months. Lastly, to top it up, turnover increased by 3%, as I mentioned earlier, and EBITDA went up by about 200 basis points. As I said, round, well-rounded performance across channels from a margin perspective. With that, I will come to a close on my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin with a question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star and one on their touchtone 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'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Samir Gupta from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Sir, firstly, if I look at large part of our initiatives that are being articulated in the presentation, these are focused on simplification of processes, lower inventory, lesser SKU, style lines. While it improves efficiency, and it also reduces the choice for the consumer, and on the other hand, there is hardly any retail store addition during the year on an overall basis. Now, initiatives are commendable. I'm not trying to downplay them, but how does this solve for growth? Or how do we reach that, you know, double-digit growth aspiration that we have laid out in recent quarters? Yeah. Okay, thanks, Samir. You're right, there are a lot of bunch of things which are enabling a lot of simplification, but let me point out a few of them, which will try and give you some flavor of where the... So the biggest one is, in my view, let's say, for example, the entire piece on elevating the marketing investments. We have significantly taken them up, and you will see that continuously going up. That's driven continuously towards growth, right? And there are, you know, obviously, certain, you know, we are also making sure that that is focused towards a few product campaigns. Last quarter, for example, our single largest one was on the festive collection, and that's given us the one prior to that was focused on only two of them, which was Victoria Ballerina, as well as the, the Power Easy Slide, and that's given us great, impact, and you will see that going forward. The second one that's there is, I firmly believe, and we have seen that in terms of the growth rate, revenue per square foot also, is that the Zero-Based Merchandising is giving us incremental benefit continuously, right? And now at the scale that it is, it is impacting the overall SSG also. So that's the second big piece. The third one, and which I feel is going to be the longest in taking impact, but will have the largest impact also, in line with our aspirations going forward, is the product one, which I commented in my commentary. The reason that this is rationalization that you see in kits, et cetera, is also to get authority on the product going. So we want to make sure that the products at the end of this full funnel that I've talked about over the last four quarters, next four quarters, you will see that our ability to make sure that the right kind of a product with the right authority from a design, material, as well as comfort perspective, comes through to the consumers in a scale that is relevant enough, and which will enable consumers to make our choices much easier for us. So I think all of these combined together are supposed to drive growth, besides obviously the one that I commented, which I'm sure you would have understood, which is expansion across channels, right? Whether it's a franchise or whether it's e-commerce or even the MBO channel. Got it, sir. This is very helpful. Second question is that there is a sharp jump in the key retail outlets this quarter, and this is both QOQ and YOY. Looks very high for one quarter. So is there a renewed strategy towards this channel, which is the MBO channel being, you know, under pressure for some years now? Yeah, yeah. So the reason... I've been talking about this for some time, Samir, right? And I think this is just the cumulative of that effort. So, you know, things take time to gain momentum, and then the results come through, right? So this is a, this is a combination of that. It's been in effort for the last about four quarters. It is not a revisiting the channel, but basically trying to look at the, these are the big ones. So I believe we reach about 20,000 outlets in MBOs, right, roughly. It's not a very easily trackable data, but the key retail outlets within that are supposed to contribute to almost these top 10% outlets, contribute to almost 25%-30% of the turnover. And making sure that we are able to present our range right, the engagement of these outlets is right. There is a engagement program which rewards them for the right performance, gets the display right. So that is the journey that we are on. I think there is enough scope on expansion itself, as well as making sure that the engagement becomes better. So you will hear a lot more of it going forward, but it's in the works for last four quarters, so it's not a sudden thing. Got it, sir. This is again very helpful. Last one, if I may squeeze in. Okay, just a bookkeeping one. So nine months, FY 2026, can you just share the broad growth numbers for different brands, Bata, Hush Puppies, Power, any other, you know, which is meaningfully large? Can we do something on that? Or, I will need to come back to you, Samir, on this in the interest of time. Sure, sir. In case I have it handy, I will comment on it in some other question. Sure, sir. I'll come back in the queue. Thanks for answering all the questions. Thanks, Sameer. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gaurav Jogani from JM Financial. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. So my first question is with regards to the GST impact. You had, you know, called out in the earlier quarter that that had an impact of around 400 basis last time around. Now, if we total up the Q2 plus Q3 revenue, that total, I think, last year, it's the sales has kind of declined. So, would it be prudent to say that, you know, the sales, whatever we have lost because of the GST disruption, that has not come back entirely and possibly could benefit going ahead as well? Okay, it's a bit difficult, Gaurav, to do a complete arithmetic on this because, you know, there was an impact, which was some amount of impact was channel, but a decent amount of impact was also consumer hesitancy. Now, for sure, as I had mentioned, even at the last quarter, when I said that post that we have seen, and that momentum as I gave in my opening remarks, we continue to see that through the, through the quarter. How much of, of it was a plus, minus, et cetera, very difficult to state, but we do see momentum continuing. So which I would say is, I think, a underlying structural impact of GST 2.0, which should continue in general for the foreseeable future. Okay. Sure, sir. I've got it. My next question, you know, is with regards to the. The channel issues, if I may just clarify. The channel issues that we had faced, obviously, the last, I mean, the quarter two, they have completely eliminated, so it's reasonably now, it's a reasonably steady state, comfortable for everyone. There is no confusion whatsoever in the channel. So I think in that manner, I think those wrinkles have got removed. Okay. Okay. So just one allied question to the GST question only. I mean, because of this rate reduction, have you now seen more attractiveness? Because, you know, because of the earlier rate hike, the mass end kind of was getting more impacted. Have you seen more recovery now in this part of the portfolio? Not as much as I would have liked, Gaurav, but yes, better than what we have seen over the last 7, 8 quarters. Sure. So my next question is with regards to the zero-based merchandising performance, the one that you mentioned about the quarter performance. Now, if you look at the delta, the delta is around 5 odd% versus, you know, the overall store network. So would you say that, you know, this is very early stage delta that you are getting, and as the time progresses, this delta can even grow bigger, or you largely expect the delta to be around this range only? Okay, so it's a delta versus rest of network. So as soon as the rest of the network, I mean, once the ZBM now is 400 stores, our ambition is to take it to almost the full network or a large part of it by the end of this year, right? In the next few couple of quarters. So, the delta is not the only relevant metric, but I understand where you're coming from. See, this is purely driven by giving us a much better curated choice to consumers, making it easier for consumers to make decisions, and making the full, you know, the machinery working towards the consumer experience, right? But there are many other parts that will add on to this, hopefully. Right. As I said, just one example that I elaborated on to a previous question, was on the product piece. Now, that piece is supposed to give us delta. That's why we are putting so much of effort on it. I feel that it's very good. Some examples of it that we have launched in men's dress, the Floatz is a classic example that we've been on it for almost three years now. They are all examples wherein we get the authority on the product, and that gives us significant purchase from a consumer attraction perspective. So they should add on. Yeah. All the other initiatives, marketing investments being elevated, right, will add on to it. Okay, okay. And, sir, just last question from my end is in terms of the channels itself. You know, we have been consistently seeing two, two things. One is your premium products continue to consistently grow at a very decent pace, and at the same time, the online and the, the EBO channel... Sorry, the online channel continues to also grow at a faster clip. So probably if you can help us out, one, how the contribution for the, the online channel now has changed, and also, on the part that, you know, that, is it margin dilutive, it is margin accretive, the same line, something on that sorts. Okay, all right. So, if I can just rephrase, contribution, how they have moved for e-commerce as well as how are they from a margin perspective. Is that right? Yeah. Yes, yes. Okay, all right. So growth rates have been very strong, I would say. I think we can do a lot more, and there's a lot of work that is afoot, both from making sure that our you know, penetration in terms of both inventory options as well as partners keeps continuing. I think we are there with most of the partners, including the Quick Commerce guys. There are a bunch of business partnering that we are doing with some of the partners also in terms of their newer initiatives and how can we participate in it, right? From a category as well as from a consumer experience perspective. So that should funnel. There is another large piece that we are trying to do in terms of making sure that we also create certain kind of a brand presence online, which is in addition to what we are anyways leveraging from the offline brand presence, right? So Floatz is a classic example. My contribution of Floatz online is still not as much or nowhere close to what it is offline. So there is a huge runway that I have in terms of driving it, and therefore, the necessity of putting brand presence. So both of these combined together, coming to your question, we should see this growth continue. It is now in, I would say, mid-double digits in terms of contribution from an e-commerce perspective. And we look at it purely e-commerce, not just the omni part, which is additional. The second one is from a contribution perspective or profit, profitability, I would say broadly it's at par. It might be slightly lower than overall profitability, but my sense is scale gives us great benefits in this. I think at the growth that it is, it'll hopefully not be a drag anymore. Thanks, Vidya. Thanks for answering this question. Thank you, Gaurav. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Devanshu Bansal from AMANK Global. Please go ahead. Yes, hi, thanks for taking my questions. Sir, I wanted to check, obviously, you mentioned that growth is not healthy with you. Can you tell us how big is the size of Hush Puppies for us, as in ballpark range, if you can allude to? It is about, overall, it's in the range of about, I think, INR 700 crore, I would say, right? And, in retail stores, it contributes to anywhere between 15%-20%. 15%-20%. And this INR 700 crore is like consumer level sales that we do, or is it like, there is a B2B? It is retail business largely, so there is no big difference between consumer sale and the realized turnover. Understood. Understood. So the intent of asking this question was from prospective increase in competitive intensity in this space, right? So there is another brand, Clarks, where rights have been acquired by Metro. Plus, we are seeing incremental focus of expansion in terms of their value brand, which is Walkway as well. So I wanted to check what steps are we sort of taking to protect our businesses at both the value end as well as at the premium end? Okay. So while I cannot comment specifically on competition, but we keep a track of it, Devanshu, right? For sure. I mean, that's part and parcel of doing business. The second thing to just keep in context, right, both ends, the market is significantly fragmented, so it's not like, you know, it's a duopoly or a monopoly, right? And there, you know, one person directly takes a share of, slice of the pie, right? But that doesn't mean that there is a consumer trend, there is a competition, there are trends that we can identify and obviously learn from also, right? So that's a continuous exercise. Irrespective of that, both at the lower end as well as the higher end, there is opportunities as well as challenges, right? Which we need to be cognizant of and therefore incorporate in strategies. Let me try and tackle in a brief manner, both of them. On the lower end, see, there are two large pieces that we are trying to do. One is that even there, one big step we took about a year back and which has now started showing some results, right, obviously aided by the GST impetus also, is the value proposition piece. We have- Right. We have got the value proposition right, and that is now showing signs of consistent traction to us, right? So that's one big piece. The second one that there is accessibility, right? We are now at almost about 700 franchise stores, so we hope to get to 1,000, hopefully in the next couple of years, right? If not earlier. And that gives you a significant leeway, especially when you are talking of the slightly margin of the products, right? So that's one, two pieces that are there. On the top end piece, let's say, Hush Puppies, specifically the example that you mentioned. There is a significant expansion. This one is already now sitting at Coco Plus franchise. We are at about 160 EBOs, right? We should be hopefully aiming for a 200 exit in the next, you know, rolling 12 months or so. So it will see a significant continuous traction in terms of expansion. In addition to that, there are, there are a few other things, right? The biggest one is in terms of product. There is a desire, and we see very clearly that there is, you know, getting the best kinds of product, the best kind of materials behind the product, right? And, nuances on design, color, et cetera, right, is the ask is even higher here. And the more we get into, let's say, departmental stores, et cetera, that's giving us even more need for it as well as urgency for it. So I think those pieces will help us. Expansion on both ends, as well as making sure that we get the product proposition right, will be the key to making sure that we continue the, you know, growth traction on these ends. Thank you for this elaborative answer, Gunjan. So last question from my end. I guess I read somewhere that we intend to increase our export business as well, right? So with recent signing of FTA, what kind of a scale are we targeting from an export perspective over the next 2-3 years? Okay. So exports is, and I mentioned this in the past, so basically we have over the last, I think, one and a half years, set up basically a dedicated sourcing hub, right? Which supplies not only to India, but also to the globe of Bata, right? Now, obviously, with the FTA that has just come in, right, it'll obviously take some time to get operationalized, which we all know, but that doesn't stop us from making sure that the groundwork also gets accelerated. So, I will not be able to give you numbers, but the ambitions are pretty large on that front, and we are wanting to make sure that... And because we've got a large footprint of Bata in Europe also, so there is invariably a lot of synergy. So even the global, Bata system is now looking at it even with even more urgency of how can we expand exports dramatically. We have been in the ballpark of about, 700,000-1,000,000 pairs historically. You will see a significant jump over the next 2-3 years. I can't come in numbers right now, but I'm sure in the next couple of quarters, I will have numbers for you. Thank you, Gunjan. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Devanshu. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. Reminder, in order to ask a question, you may press star and one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Muskana from Swan Investment. Please go ahead. Hi. My question would be, like, how many stores do we have for Hush Puppies, and how many stores do we aspire to grow in the coming years? Okay. Hi, Muskana. We have, as I just mentioned, in the prior question, we have about total of 160 EBOs, about 125, 135 are Coco and 25, if I remember, are franchise. Just help me, I'm just checking the numbers somewhere.... Okay. And we should be aiming for, as I said, in the next 12 months, reasonably ambitious, but we should be aiming for about 200+. These are the COCO stores, right? I wanted to know specific- No, Exclusive Brand Outlets. Yeah. Okay. Okay, fine. So these are exclusively for Hush Puppies, right? That's what your question was. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Muskana. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ask a question, you may press star and one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Chetan Thacker from M3 Investment Private Limited. Please go ahead. Hi, Chetan. Mr. Thacker, you may please proceed with your question. Hello. Sir, am I audible now? Yes, you are. Hi, Chetan. Yes. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon, sir. So just two questions. One is, when I typically observe the footfall at your store, what is quite evident to me is that there is a fair degree of brand recall for customers who are in their thirties and above, who have experienced the brand, and hence there is a large degree of recall when it comes to Bata. But when I look at the cohort, which is, say, in their twenties or mid-twenties, so to speak, there the recall remains quite low even now. So what would be your take there? What is your data that you're seeing and your experience, and how do we address this? And the second question is more from your mix of in-house manufacturing and outsourcing, because we've seen a VRS which has happened in Hosur as well, along with Batanagar, that happened. How are you looking at the mix between outsourcing and own manufacturing, and what are the pros and cons for both of them? Okay. From an age profile of consumers, etc., your, your anecdotal observation is actually not very, is actually not very inaccurate, right? So our average age of consumers, as per our CRM database, is in the early thirties, right? So about 31, 32 is what I remember, right? It's got a little younger over the last, I think, let's say 3, 4 years, but it's in that ballpark of 31, 32, right? (.......) So there is a bunch of consumers, largely, I would say, between 25-30 also. There are the... What our consumer research, et cetera, Chetan, says- (......) is on two fronts. One is that, awareness, I don't think that's a problem. (.......) Even the twenties, consumers know Bata. (.......) Do you have relevance from a product profile perspective of what they're needing and wanting from an experience as well as product profile? There is areas to work upon. (.......) I will give you two large, but there are many other flavors to it. (.........) One is this whole piece on sneakers, and you will see that work coming through more and more, but that space is very, very dominant in their consideration of relevance, et cetera, from a footwear perspective. (....) The second one that there is online, right? Yeah. A lot of their consumption, their discovery experience comes from online, as well as- (..........) even digital interface with brands, et cetera. (........) So we have tried to move a lot of our digital spend, which is much easier. Anyways, a lot of our marketing spend has moved digital, and within digital- also has moved from, you know, celebrities towards social media influencers, et cetera, right? (......) So that piece is also the other big pivot that I think is work in progress. We need to continuously keep doing more, right? Now, that's on one end. The other piece is also making sure that you are able to, you know, as I said, you are able to make sure that your stores look younger. (.......) So the whole piece that was there of Sneaker Studio, Bata Red 2.0, as well as now this whole ZBM piece of, you know, making sure that the consumer is the center of the store from a offering perspective, are all working towards that same direction. But I would say that that's an area that still needs a lot more improvement. I think with elevated marketing spends, you will be able to attract those consumers a lot more. Your second question was... Can you just repeat your second question? Outsourcing. So the mix between outsourcing and in-house. Yeah, in-house manufacturing- Yeah. -versus outsourcing. So it's a long-term strategy, Chetan, that I've been talking about for some time now, right? (......) We were, let's say, about 4 years back, at almost 30%-35% contribution of our product coming from in-house manufacturing. (.....) From a long-term strategy, we see that coming down gradually, right? And we are now sitting in the mid-teens, I would say, roughly. (.....) That will continue to taper. Not to say we have not invested. So we have invested in CapEx as well as technology on certain key lines, but the large- (......) principle that I mentioned even earlier, and the VRS and the actions are in those same lines. (......) are basically to do with, you know, wherever I've got an IPR, which is technology-driven, wherever I've got automation and wherever I've got large CapEx, right? Low labor is what I would like to keep in-house. The rest of it is better off done through contract manufacturers. Actually, just a follow-up on the second bit. So when we do in-house versus the contract manufacturing, does it not elongate the go-to-market time for us, or it does not matter really? Intuitively, you're right, but what we are doing is we are doing it differently. So we are also consolidating our, our contract manufacturing partners. So they were about 120+ till about three years back. Now they are down to 60. We will see further rationalization of it. Ideally, our goalpost on this is to have only 15 partners, right? Understood. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. So that will give us a significant amount of... Lead time is one big thing, but that is not the bigger one. The bigger one is the leveraging and cross-leveraging best practices, technology and innovation, product development becoming an extended arm, et cetera. So a lot of those benefits are far higher and obviously much better quality control. Sure. Understood, sir. So fair to assume that to address the first issue, we will first need to obviously address, the product bit as well? ...Brand marketing can continue online, and discovery can also help get conversions from the customers we are, who are in the younger pool today. To give you credit, we've seen the impact of store renovation, so that is quite visible and refreshing. That should be a fair takeaway from this. Captured well. Thank you. Sure. Sure, sir. Thank you so much. All the best. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aniket Salunke from Sunrise Kids and Securities Private Limited. Please go ahead. Hello, Gunjan. Aniket Salunke this side. So my question was, like you added 27 new franchisee outlets, and ZBM expanded across 400+ stores. So what is the expected ramp-up timeline for revenue contribution for this new and updated stores? And like, how are these performing versus company-owned stores? Okay, the—you're talking of the franchise stores or- Yeah, franchisee stores. Franchisee stores and ZBM. Okay. So ZBM, we have got a chart which clearly tells you how they are doing versus rest of the network, right? So that delta that you see, basically, just to make it easier for you, it's 5%. We've seen that now over a very large network. These are the top 400 stores of our network, right? And they are continuously doing better on a very large scale. And as I said, we will continuously expand. In fact, now we have become more confident as well as we understand the process of expanding faster. So we hopefully this year, we should be done with the ZBM agenda also. Right now, coming back to, and, coming back to the franchisee, so, franchise model is attuned towards smaller consumer cohorts, Aniket. Right now, historically, Bata was not good at franchise, right? Over the last about 4 or 5 years, we have expanded it from less than 50 stores to now close to 700. As I have mentioned earlier in the call, right, we aim to be at about 1,000 plus in the next couple of years. Okay. Now, this is largely driven in tier three and downward markets, and smaller suburbs of the larger metros or cities or tier one, tier two cities. Right now, these are consumer cohorts which are smaller. They are upcoming. Obviously, they're growing really fast because that's where urbanization is all happening. Historically, we were not able to tap into it easily, and, franchise is a very efficient, extremely profitable win-win model, which allows us to do that, and that's given us all this traction. So, yeah, I hope that answers your question. Okay. So as you mentioned, like you are expecting 1,000+ franchisee stores. So any guidance on revenue growth, margin trajectory for the next 2 quarters? I will not be able to give you guidance, but we obviously are doing this for growth, right? So the objective is to keep driving growth, and franchise is one lever to driving that. Okay. My next question is, like, how is e-commerce and digital share trending, and what initiatives are underway to expand this channel? Okay, I, I answered that in a call, in a question prior, but it's basically mid-teens from a contribution perspective. It has been our fastest growing channel for the last almost five years or so. Now, it's significant bases also, so it's no longer a small base. It grew, and I've, I have shared that in the document also. We grew at about 15 odd% last quarter, and in fact, our ambition is to grow it even faster going forward. Okay. And my last question is like on inventory and working capital. So I saw like that inventory efficiencies are 11%. That was highlighted. So how sustainable are these improvements, and like, what are the risks of future inventory buildups if demand softens? Okay, I'll hand over to Amit to answer that. Yeah, hi. Aniket, thanks for raising this. See, what we are doing is a structural correction through the Project Customer First, what we talked about. What we have done is we have reduced the number of lines, therefore, less inventory to be managed, right? Okay. We are improving the freshness of the inventory. As we earlier mentioned, that right now we are at one time, all-time low aged inventory, and we have doing more science-based data analysis in terms of predicting the future demand. Mm-hmm. All that is helping us in ordering the right inventory, right? So that we don't end up having accumulated inventory, which is not desired from a consumer perspective. So the inventory reduction, what you see, is sustainable, and you will see further reduction compared to where we are right now. Over the 2-year, we may have done about 25% reduction, right? But that trend will continue. You will see further improvement on that inventory side. Okay. Yeah, so it is not coming at a compromise of ability to serve, right? I mean, it is at better or even higher availability in stores, right? So it is not coming at the cost of that. It is both, right? That is the whole objective of this project to customer first. Mm. Okay, got it. Thank you. Okay. That's all from my side. Thanks, Amit and Gunjan. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kunal Bhatia from Dalal and Brothers Stockbroking. Hi, Kunal. Hi. Hi, sir. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Sir, could you give us some- Kunal, can you speak a little louder? ... Yeah. Can you hear me now? 10% I am not, but- Hello. Yeah, much better. Yeah, yeah. So, could you give some sense on, for the nine-month period, how has the SSG panned out and how has been the revenue per square feet? And then I'll follow up with another. Okay. Yeah, we don't share the SSG numbers, Kunal, but however, what we have shared consistently has been basically the ZBM performance. That has been significantly accretive, right? So that continues. The overall nine-month numbers are published and available, right? I would say that, they would be overall flattish, I believe, right? But the fact is that, we had a GST disruption in one of the quarters, so yeah, that's where the commentary will stand. Okay. Sir, it's been like a long period of time wherein the growth has been lagging around the single digit. Sir, according to you, what is the kind of assessment we have done in terms of the efforts put in? Because there are, I agree to it, there are a lot of efforts being put in from the last couple of years now. Still there are some pain points which are old enough to be handled. Is it that the hard decisions are not being taken? Or what is the issue that we have still not been able to... I agree there are some external factors also, but, what are the kind of things, we will still require to do, to get to a double-digit kind of growth, from this low base effect? If you could, throw some light on, the broader perspective in terms of the next, say, one or two-year period. Okay. We don't give any forward-looking forecast, Kunal, but, if you look at it, I mean, the slide number 3 on the presentation that has been uploaded, right, is exactly trying to answer the questions on how do we want to drive growth going forward, right? And it also is consciously put in a sequence of gestation of work that is going backwards as well as going forwards, right? So some of the works that are there in the points 1, 2, as well as 3, are significantly underway from an action perspective. So the inventory declutter, making sure that, you know, the consumer experience is elevated from a stores, et cetera, perspective, as well as marketing ex-investments are elevated, are already underway, and I have already commented on them. I think the one that will give us even more impetus, I think there is a lot of scope in the next four quarters that you will see, is the one on network expansion, as well as in terms of the product funnel. So I think, that chart itself answers the question that you're talking about. Sir, according to you, any older pain points which you have not been able to touch base upon, and you do feel that maybe it's a hard decision, but if taken, things could improve significantly? I think the biggest one, not a hard decision, but the one with the longest gestation is the product piece, right? Making sure that we've got a significant authority, as well as our own stamp of design, as well as comfort behind each product of ours, is where the gestation is the longest. But there is now enough work underway, as I have outlined the chart, which is, I think, chart number 15, which I had opened up last time, and now I've given a lot more color to it, right, is the one that is the longest gestation. So not the difficult one, but the one that you will see a lot more effect coming through, not only in my calls to you all, but also in the stores going forward, and hopefully traction from consumers. Okay, sir. All the best. Thank you. Thanks, Kunal. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would like to end the conference. Over to the management of the Bata. Thank you, and over to you, team. Thank you, everyone, for joining. It was lovely interacting. Over to you and the moderator for closing. Thanks. Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of B&K Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.