Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q4 FY 2021 earnings conference call of Indian Energy Exchange hosted by Axis Capital Limited. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sumit Kishore from Axis Capital Limited. Sumit, over to you, sir. Thank you, Ritujaya. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Axis Capital, I'm pleased to welcome you all for the Indian Energy Exchange Q4 FY 2021 earnings conference call. We have with us the management team of IEX, which is represented by Mr. Vineet Harlalka, our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Rohit Bajaj, Head, Business Development, and Ms. Aparna Garg, Lead Investor Relations. We will begin with the opening remarks from Mr. Bajaj, followed by an interactive Q&A session. Over to you, Rohit. Thank you, Sumit. Sumit, am I audible clearly? Yes. Thanks. Good afternoon, dear friends. I welcome you all to the Q4 and fiscal year 2021 earnings call. Present with me today are my colleagues, Vineet Harlalka, Rajesh Kumar Mediratta, Amit Kumar, Sangh Gautam, Amir Prakash, Deepak Mehta, Indranil Chatterjee, Shruti Bhatia, and Aparna Garg. Our Chairman and Managing Director, Satyanarayan Goel, is unable to join us today. He had been keeping little unwell and is now recovering. Amidst the surging COVID pandemic, I sincerely hope you all, your colleagues, your families, have been keeping safe, healthy, and cautious. The second wave has affected us in so many ways. Our wishes for everyone wellbeing, good health, and speedy recovery. It has been almost a year since we have been confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. Its harsh realities have impacted many of us, besides marking dent on the economy, industry, as well as life as such. The second wave of the pandemic poses some risk and might offset some of the economic gains made in the last few quarters. The fiscal year 2021 has had its own share of ups and downs. As we face the hardships caused by the pandemic, the macroeconomic growth indicator dipped to unforeseen levels. The energy and power sector have not been an exception. The first two quarters were difficult. However, the last two quarters have seen good growth momentum led by resilience from the economic and industrial activities front. In fact, in both Q3 and Q4, IEX achieved the highest quarterly volume ever traded at the platform. During the fiscal year 2021, we made significant contribution towards supporting the economic and industrial revival through our robust business continuity plan. It ensured round-the-clock access to our trading platform and facilitated the distribution utilities with uninterrupted access to most competitively priced electricity in the most flexible, transparent, and reliable manner, thereby helping them accrue financial savings as well as improve their financial liquidity. Besides the launch of new market segments, the Real-Time Market, as well as Green Market, this added much-needed vibrancy and dynamism to the market, providing great choices in terms of product offering to the market participants. As our nation prepares to revive the economic growth, we are confident of playing a key role in establishing an efficient energy order and supporting India's transition to building a sustainable energy economy. Technology and innovation are the key cornerstones of our vision to build energy markets. As a technology-led marketplace, we strive to integrate innovative technologies at both the trading and the enterprise IT levels to provide an intuitive, seamless, customer-centric, and best-in-class solutions to the market participants. Fiscal year 2021 has been an exceptional year for us in our journey of the last 12+ years. We can say that the year was characterized by digital transformation, comprising several initiatives all termed on technology and customer centricity. Our key role in the energy ecosystem, robust digital and technology infrastructure, growing and diverse market segments, and seamless market operation and services have helped us deliver success in these challenging times. During the year, we strengthened an advanced technology, expanded IEX product portfolio with the commencement of new market segments, such as Green Market and Real-Time Markets, and also diversified our play within the energy sector with entry into gas trading through India's first authorized gas exchange, which is IGX, Indian Gas Exchange. The Indian Gas Exchange has subsequently onboarded several eminent strategic partners such as NSE, ONGC, GAIL, Adani Total Gas, and Torrent Gas as key stakeholders. Our sectoral partners have a strong play in both upstream and downstream segments of the gas sector, while NSE, a global market leader with rich legacy expertise and experience in conducting operations at a large scale, should help IGX play a key role in developing India as a market-based gas economy. With the market participants warming up to the idea of competitive priced gas and several key policy and regulatory initiatives, we expect trade to grow at a faster pace in the coming months. Additionally, during the year, IEX also signed a licensing agreement with Multi Commodity Exchange of India, MCX. Under the MCX, they launch electricity derivatives in the country using IEX price as a reference price. Of course, this is subject to approval from government and the regulators. Throughout the year, we engaged with customers through the outreach and capacity building efforts through series of workshops and webinars focused on electricity market, Green Market, as well as the gas markets. To build momentum in the gas market, we introduced an open auction format and also several market-friendly features, which have been received very well by the market parties. In February 2021, the CEA laid down the much-awaited procedure for approval and facilitation of cross-border electricity trade, and we are pleased to inform that on 17th April 2021, we pioneered commencement of the cross-border electricity trade on exchange. In the mid to long term, our endeavor is to build a vibrant and integrated South Asian regional power market. Nepal is the first country to have participated in the Day-Ahead Market on exchange, and Nepal has since been trading on a daily basis. The trading volumes are likely to increase going forward. We also continue our proactive efforts to bring other grid-connected South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and Bhutan. Simultaneously, we have also been doing the groundwork to advance our technology platform to support the lineup of upcoming new segments that include longer duration delivery contracts and the integrated green Day-Ahead Market. Our efforts around this front and invaluable support from our members, clients, partners, and employees have helped us navigate safely through the challenging times during the last one year. Continued encouragement and support from all our stakeholders have been key to delivering a great success, and we continue to be optimistic about our future growth trajectory. I will now share with you overall economic and industry update and how it played out for our business. The industrial and economic activity and thereby electricity consumption reduced over 23% during the initial month of fiscal year 2021, primarily due to nationwide lockdowns. In the subsequent months, with the relaxation in the restriction, manufacturing PMI that had dipped to the historic level of -57.3 in April 2020 rebounded to +58.9, the highest over the last eight years. The industrial activity decelerated a bit in Q4 compared to Q3 FY 2021. It remained above 50. This has been a good sign so far and indicates the resilience and recovery of Indian economy. With the recovery in the economic activities, electricity demand and consumption improved. The electricity consumption had dropped by 23% in April 2020 and remained negative for first two quarters. The phenomenal rebound was seen in Q3 FY 2021. In Q4 FY 2021, electricity consumption increased by 8.9% YoY. The national peak demand also met highest level of 189 GW in the fiscal year 2020. As of March 2021, the installed power capacity at 382 GW saw 3.3% YoY growth. The renewable energy capacity saw 9% YoY growth, with cumulative renewable capacity now at 94 GW from an earlier 87 GW in the fiscal year 2020. This considerable growth in green power reiterates the fast-paced energy shift that has been underway and an increased emphasis on building a sustainable and decarbonized energy economy. During the fiscal year 2021, IEX witnessed increased participation from the market participants, given its robust value proposition of most competitive price, besides the flexibility, transparency, and no counterparty risk in the power procured. This was also reflected in the increase in share of exchanges in the short-term power market, which has increased from 40% in the fiscal year 2020 to 54% in the fiscal year 2021. This is a significant jump of 14% in just one year. Most importantly, power exchanges now contribute about 6% of the electricity consumed in the country. This was 4.4% in the last fiscal, 2020. Therefore, the exchange market has seen accelerated pace of growth in the last fiscal year. On the policy and regulatory front, the government introduced many futuristic initiatives to support the revival of power sector. With an objective to revive the viability of the distribution segment, especially from the perspective of DISCOM's financial health, the Power Ministry came up with the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020, proposing amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003 with an aim to unleash distribution reforms such as de-licensing of distribution business and facilitating competition in the power distribution and supply. This was followed by FM's announcement in the Union Budget 2021-22 to introduce revamped performance-based result link power distribution sector scheme. This is set to be launched with an outlay of INR 300,000 crore over five year. Further, to encourage better efficiency through increased competition within the distribution segment, government will introduce electricity connections portability while giving consumers the power of choice. In December, the Ministry of Power also introduced a proposal enabling the distribution utility to exit the power purchase agreement after completion of the term of agreement. This initiative will accelerate utility procurement, besides increased sale of power by the generators on the exchange platform. Another key development from consumer perspective was notification of Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020. This was a significant step that aimed at streamlining and enhancing the quality of electricity supply and services being provided to consumers across the country. More recently, the government has also issued the Draft National Electricity Policy, 2021, which underlines the most pertinent issues of power sector with key focus on areas such as promotion of clean and sustainable generation of electricity, development of adequate and efficient transmission system, revitalization of distribution utilities, as well as the development of efficient power market through an increased role of markets. Aiming at market to represent 25% share by FY 2024. The Ministry of Power also issued a paper on development of integrated daily Day-Ahead Market in power exchange, with separate price formation for renewable energy and conventional power. Some of the important regulatory initiatives to deepen the power market were CERC Power Market Regulation 2021, which allows introduction of electricity contracts beyond 11 days, notification of procedure on cross-border electricity trade, merit order dispatch and power purchase optimization regulations by some state regulators. On the gas market front, PNGRB introduced the Gas Exchange Regulations, 2020 in September 2020. Another important step that would help the development of gas market was the simplification of the pipeline tariff structure by PNGRB. The two-zone tariff structure, which led to a reduction in the transmission charges for distant user of natural gas, thereby making it more conducive for trade on gas market. PNGRB has also notified final regulations regarding access code of CGD entities, post exclusivity period wherein 20% of the pipeline network will be available for open access. Another important development was PNGRB notifying the Imbalance Management Service Regulation. These developments together will help increase competitiveness in the market and increase the consumption of natural gas in the country. On a standalone basis, now I'll talk about financial and business performance. On a standalone basis, revenue for the quarter grew by 28.3% YoY from INR 79.4 crore in Q4 FY 2020 to INR 101.8 crore in Q4 FY 2021. This largely attributed to a 41% increase in transaction revenue. For the fiscal year 2021, this growth was 20.3% YoY, with revenue at INR 357.4 crores for the year. Q4 FY 2021 saw the highest ever electricity volume growth of 62% YoY during the quarter. Also, fiscal year 2021 saw the highest ever yearly volume of 73.9 billion units traded at the exchange since 2008, since inception, resulting in a growth of 37.3% in electricity segment on year-on-year basis. The growth was driven by the competitive power prices, creating traction with the distribution utilities as well as industrial consumers, growing consumption of electricity, availability of adequate domestic coal, and that too at a competitive price, along with the commencement of new and much-awaited market segments, such as the Real-Time Market and Green Market. The Day-Ahead Market saw an average market clearing price of INR 2.82 in fiscal year 2021, which is about 6% lower than the previous year price. Low power prices and ample sell side liquidity throughout the year helped the distribution utilities and industrial consumers to optimize their power procurement and maintain good financial liquidity amidst the COVID time. The Real-Time Market commenced trading on 1st June 2020 and has received an incredible response from all the market participants. The market crossed 1 BU mark for four consecutive months, that is from December 2020 to March 2021. In fact, in March 2021, it saw the highest ever monthly volume of 1.4 billion units on a cumulative basis. In Q4 FY 2021, the market traded 3,766 million units. Since its commencement, the market has traded 9,468 or 9. 5 billion units. We introduced another important market segment this year, Green Term-ahead Market, to support and accelerate India's transition to a sustainable energy economy. The market commenced trading on 21st August 2020 and has cumulatively traded 785 million units since commencement. In Q4, the market traded 238 million unit volume across both solar and non-solar segment. As per the APTEL order, the stay in REC trading has been continuing since June 2020. During the fiscal year, the REC market could only cumulatively trade 6.97 lakh credit claims. This has been a damper for the exchange market during the otherwise exceptional financial year. Talking about way forward, fiscal year 2021 was a year of splendid success and growth for us. The year started in a turbulent way. However, demand resilience and positive sentiments in the last two quarters assisted economic revival and recovery in a significant way. While we are now going through and experience a second and a much harsher pandemic wave, our experience to deal with challenges, undaunted spirit, and collective efforts will ensure victory in this battle. The localized restrictions and lockdowns may impact economic growth to some extent. However, the industry and commercial ecosystems seems to be well prepared this time as compared to last year, and consumption seems to be stable. Going to the current situation, while RBI expect that the GDP will grow at 10.5% in this system, the industry experts have started coming out with revised estimates ranging between 10%-12%. Taking all this into account and looking at the growth momentum IEX achieved in fiscal year 2021. We would endeavor to maintain double-digit category growth track that we have achieved over the last five years. Overall, we expect the demand to register a robust growth during the next year, two on account of economic revival. Further, conducive policy and regulatory regime besides increasing power demand and consumption, adequate availability of domestic coal, and phasing out of old and inefficient plants will serve as a key growth levers for us. The much-awaited launch of two market segments, longer duration delivery contracts up to 365 days, integrated Green Day-Ahead Market, commencement of derivative trading on commodity exchanges, and focus on diversification will unleash growth for us. In fiscal 2021, we made considerable investment to strengthen and advance our technology. We will continue the momentum in this fiscal too. Our endeavor is to make IEX the best-in-the-class technology platform. In FY 2022, we will see fruits of past investments and our continuing efforts and investment toward technology innovation and automation. Some new initiatives that our market participants will experience are provisioning of data insights, APIs, adoption of advanced MILP algorithm, and most importantly, our web-based trading portal, which we have recently launched on April 28th, will make the trading experience seamless and far more intuitive for our participants. Coming to the new product launches, we have already marked the beginning of this year with the launch of cross-border electricity trade. We expect to create greater momentum as we engage in the capacity building and create awareness among the stakeholders. After Nepal, we expect countries such as Bhutan and Bangladesh to join soon. We are also working to introduce longer duration delivery contracts up to 365 days in both electricity and green markets. Another market segment that we expect to launch is integrated green day-ahead market. Once functional, this will allow greater avenues for renewable power sellers and buyers to trade renewable power. We will continue to work in collaboration with the government, customers, and other stakeholders to develop the energy markets. As we move forward with confidence and certainty in this otherwise uncertain year, we firmly believe that the energy markets play a key role in transforming the sector. IEX is committed to playing a proactive role in facilitating the much-needed efficiency, competitiveness, and sustainability in the energy ecosystem. Thank you. Over to you, Sumit. Ritujaya, we can open for questions. 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 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Rohit, while the question queue assembles, I have a question. What is your take on the resumption of trading in REC? When do you see that happening? What is your take on the status of new product launches, particularly LDC, and the timing of that in FY 2022? Yeah. Rajesh sir, you are there? Yeah. Coming to answer your first question, which is about resumption of REC trade. In fact, APTEL has given multiple dates in the month of April where they wanted to do hearing on continuous basis because initially they came out with the three dates in the month of April, and they wanted to do it on a fast-track basis so that in a month or so time, the REC trading can be resumed. Now the recent development is on the last date of hearing, which was 28th because of the COVID situation again, the new date given by them is July 14th, which is again three months away. This is a little bit setback, I would say, because we were expecting it to start somewhere later in Q1 itself, but now it will surely go to Q2. Resumption will not happen till Q2. Since REC is one segment where you have to fulfill your obligation on annual basis, and since last year trading didn't happen, so all the RPO has been carried forward to this particular year. Even we might start little late, but as and when it will start, all the participants, both distribution company as well as consumer, they will try to fulfill their entire past obligation, which is for FY 2021 also and FY 2022 also. Though it is being pushed a little because of this pandemic situation, but we are hopeful that by Q2, it must start. Similar is the case with ESCerts market, energy saving certificates, because we were expecting it to start somewhere in Q3 FY 2021. Again, on similar reasons because of pandemic, it also got pushed. Same for energy saving certificates. We are expecting it to start trading somewhere in the Q2 FY 2022. That was your first part. Can you please repeat your second part of the question? Yes. I asked about the status on the new product launches and when, particularly LDC, when can we expect it to happen this year, and what volume to expect in this market? LDC is another segment which we are very excited about, and here we have already filed petition with CERC. We obviously filed about 6 months back, a long time since we have filed it. The only thing which is blocking introduction of this new product is the settlement has happened between the two regulators, which is SEBI and CERC, but they have to withdraw case from Supreme Court, decade-long case, which is pending there in the Supreme Court, they have to withdraw that. Once that is withdrawn, our petition will be taken up for hearing, and then we will get approval. Our expectation is, after the Supreme Court withdrawal, we expect two to three months for the purpose of launching this new contract, which is power duration contract. Suppose this happens somewhere in end of Q1 or early Q2. By Q2 end or early Q3, we should be in a position to launch this particular product. From our side, technology readiness is there. Petition we have already filed. Nothing is stopping us from this. The only thing is the regulatory bottlenecks are there, which is taking a little more time. It is taking a little more time than our expectation. That's one. You also asked about volume. Here, on annual basis, about 25 to 30 billion units are trading under this particular power contract platform. Today, most of these transactions are done through this platform. We expect if we go by the similar volume, 30 BU potential is there in this particular segment. Depending on our launch in current fiscal, we would like to capture some of that value. Yeah, thank you. I was on mute, so I could not ask question, but you covered very well. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Ritujaya, please take the questions from the line. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Kumar from PN Capital. Please go ahead. Hello. Yeah, please go ahead. I'm Mohit Kumar, PN Capital. Sir, just few questions, sir. How far are we in terms of readiness for launching Green Day-Ahead Market contracts? Secondly, where do you think RTM volumes can stabilize as a% of total electricity volume? While we had a very good year FY 2020, FY 2021. How far it will go up as a% of total electricity volumes to be in short to medium terms? Mohit, I'll try to answer second question first, and then Rajesh sir can take up the first one. Last year, RTM volume total, which was available only for 10 months, this particular product was available for 10 months, did about 13%. Its contribution was 13% in our total electricity volume. If you see Q4 particularly, Q4 which was very good, in fact, very exceptional for us in volume terms. A contribution of Real-Time Market was close to 17.5%. It is picking up really well. We are seeing increased participation coming from almost all the segments, which includes distribution utilities as well as open access consumers. What is happening here is, now some of the distribution utilities, they are dividing their total requirement in two baskets. One is the firm thing, which they are coming to Day-Ahead Market, which is absolute essential, which they want to do. Then where there is some, 10%- 20%, some mismatches there, they have some doubts whether this sort of demand would be there or not. That part they are keeping for Real-Time Market. This is one reason. In fact, in the month of April, the same trend continued. April, we again witnessed more than 1 billion unit, and in fact, highest ever monthly volume was recorded in the month of April. Difficult to put number to it because we have seen consistent growth there. I won't be surprised if this starts to do somewhere between 20%-25% also in, let's say, few quarters from now, then I won't be surprised. If I have answered your question. For the first part, Mohit, GDAM is something which we have been pursuing along with CERC. Earlier we had applied for GDAM, it was rejected in 2018. Now again, the ministry is very keen to launch this GDAM market. Already paper was issued, and paper sets the target of deadline of June 30th. The only thing is we don't expect CERC to clear our application by June 30th. We have already filed our application last month. We are waiting for approval of GDAM from CERC, and post-approval, we will be ready to launch this. As soon as CERC, we are ready for launch with the GDAM. Maybe quarter two of this year, we should expect this market to come in. Yes. Understood, sir. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gokul Maheshwari from Awriga Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you for taking my question. Sir, RTM market has done really well for us, and the market share gains have come from largely the bilateral market and not from the DSM. Could you just comment on how can we really capture more share from the DSM market? Just on the second question is on the REC, with things, just wanted to reconfirm that the customer segment will have to make up for the FY 2021 volumes as well. If you could just confirm that as well. Thank you. Yeah. For REC segment, yes, they have to make up for the FY 2021 volume as well because this RPO calculation is done on annual basis in most of the cases. In certain cases, carry forward is allowed, in some other cases it is not allowed, there was no option available. You have to make up for that in the subsequent year. Most of that will get converted into FY 2022. To answer your first part, which is about RTM. There is no shifting which has happened from bilateral market to RTM, no. These are two very different time frames. These market operates in very different time frame. When we talk about bilateral market, it is normally one month and beyond, right? When those who are participating in Real-Time Market, they are doing it on the basis of their balancing requirement, their correction in forecasting, where they have gone wrong on day basis, that correction they do in the RTM market. No relation between the two. As far as DSM is concerned, lot of shifting has happened. If you see absolute number of DSM, you will not find major change there. If we do some deep analysis of DSM number, we have seen that lot of quantum has shifted from DSM to this. What happens in DSM is when you are overdrawing from grid, there are various slabs where, suppose we are drawing more than 12%, then there is a 20% slab penalty which is applicable. Up to 12%, nothing is applicable. You have to purely pay on the basis of DSM prices. Suppose we are going beyond 15%, then 40% is applicable, and after that, 100% penalty is applicable. What we have seen in most of the cases, there are certain states which are overdrawing. Their penalty portion, the quantum they were overdrawing and paying high penalty, that has gone down. That quantum has shifted to RTM market. I will quote some more examples. We have seen in many cases where all of a sudden there is a tripping of one big state plant. We have seen in case of many states, particularly Chhattisgarh two, three times, all of a sudden, their one plant which was running at 600 MW got tripped for some reason. This state was participating in RTM in a very big way. To make up for the loss which has happened on account of this plant going off power, they had no other option but to come to RTM market. Had this market not been there, they would have been dependent on DSM market. They would have paid very high penalty by overdrawing from grid. As per our analysis, lot of shifting has happened. Only thing is absolute number has not gone down. To the extent there is no penalty available, states are still drawing, and which is right also. There is no harm in that. As long as you are paying pure normal DSM prices, it is okay to overdraw to that limit. Okay. Lastly, just on the dividend, your payouts, I mean, the company sitting on around INR 600 crores of cash. Could you just comment on your dividend payout policy, especially given that investments are largely done with the IGX as well, and there are no major capital investments. Is there a firm dividend payout policy? I would request Vineet to take up this, please. Thanks, Rohit. I'd like to inform that we have a dividend policy, as per the dividend policy, the company vows to ensure that 50% of the profit should be distributed in the form of dividend. Keeping in that line, in January itself, so it's in the last quarter, the company paid a dividend of INR 2.50 Per share. Considering that because this time, because of the COVID uncertainties, the dividend was not declared. Definitely it was on the cards. When we go with our annual report to the shareholder, definitely we make use in dividend portion. Regarding the INR 600 crore lying with the company, you will see the exchange business is a bit a different business. There's a lot of company get the deposits on the firm. Those funds are lying with the company. If you look at the overall shareholder fund, that fund will not be that significant in comparison to the overall. Company invested the money in the IGX, and they're also exploring a lot of other opportunities because the way the platform market and the way those sector is booming. We are definitely looking at it and whatever they call the boards and all the management team will take the ultimate call, whatever they value, that's when we take the decision. Great. Thank you so much, and stay safe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Devansh Nigotia from SIMPL. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a very good set of numbers. Sir, just one reclarification on LDC and derivatives contract. In the interview today, we expressed that there was a positive development. Currently you highlighted that the matter has been settled, but the case has not been withdrawn. I'm just not able to understand what has really changed here from the past. Nothing changed in last quarter or last few months, I would say. What we are saying is the settlement has happened. There is absolute clarity amongst both the regulators, which is SEBI and CERC in this particular case. They have drawn line, what falls under whose jurisdiction. Only thing is this settlement has to be vetted by the court because this is pending in Supreme Court for almost 10 years now. This is very close to resolution now. Only thing is they have to file one joint application for withdrawal, which they have already filed. The problem is, for some reason because of COVID, only very pressing matters are being taken up at Supreme Court level. In the past, we have seen many dates were given, and for some reason, the hearing didn't happen on that date. It is just one hearing away from Supreme Court, where the final order will come and the settlement done by the regulators and ministries will be acknowledged and will be authorized. Nothing changed. The only thing is we are waiting for Supreme Court to come out with the order so that those can be opened and finally, these contracts can be launched. Okay. In case of Green Term-ahead Market, there has been an increase in the momentum recently. Is it because that the summers are there, which keeps the liquidity from the side of the generator on a higher side? Is there some seasonal effect or something has changed structurally here? Yes. It's a combination of both the things. We have not many sellers today who are actively participating here, and some of the state utilities are also there. Some southern state utilities are actively participating, and their own demand has gone down. When their own demand has gone down a little, they have huge surplus quantum which they want to sell, and they are bidding that at our platform. That is number one. Second important thing is, when we launched this market in August 2020. August 2020 is normally a time when your wind season is over. In India, we have wind generation starts to pick in somewhere in May, and it peaks somewhere in June, July, August, and after that it decreases again. Last time, we could not take advantage of wind season because by the time we launched this contract, not enough wind generation was there. This time we are rightly placed, and initial five, six months, this volume should be very high because solar, which is largely available throughout the year, wind is something which is available only mostly in the H1. That is another reason why we are seeing some traction. Okay. Amongst the generators who are not tied up with PPAs, what is the percentage of the generators we are able to tap on the exchange currently for trading of GTAM, and what are the constraints for the generators who we are not able to tap and who are still not tied up with the PPA? For all the renewable plants, you will find that all the renewable generators, they have some sort of arrangement either with the consumers or with the distribution company, where they are supplying under certain terms and conditions. Most of these are under long-term PPA, which is up to 25 years. There are many small generators where they have small quantum PPAs with the consumers, with the C&I segment, particularly for one year also. Today we have seen participation of over 10 generators at our platform already, where they have participated and whatever surplus quantum they had, they have started. In fact, there are two, three opportunities for us. One opportunity is where they have tie-up, very short-term tie-up. There are many where they have tie-up of one to three years. We are targeting those generators because here the realization is pretty good, and they can explore this option as well. That is one. Second is, there is another set of generators where, as per the PPA terms, they have to maintain certain utilization factors in a year. Sometimes what happens is, now particularly because of newer technologies, because of some good year where your generation is little more, they exceed those CUF numbers. What we are trying to tell them is, when they are going beyond their PPA commitment, they can also come to this platform and start selling their surplus power and thereby realizing the market prices that are there available. Large part of the transactions which are happening today, here the sellers are distribution company. There are many distribution company in the country today, those who have surplus. There are states like Karnataka, which is surplus in both solar as well as non-solar. AP is surplus in both solar, non-solar. Telangana is surplus in solar. Tamil Nadu is surplus in non-solar. Gujarat is surplus in one of the two. Similarly, Rajasthan is also surplus. Many distribution companies are there who are surplus, and we are trying to get them on board so that sell side liquidity can be maintained. On the buy side, there is no dearth of demand because since REC trading is not happening, most of these buyers, they are willing to buy green energy itself for the purpose of making their RPO and prices are also quite decent, very competitive price of power is available. Sir, in case of cross-border, the existing volume that we highlighted was 18.07 billion units in FY 2021. What percentage would be up to 11 days and 11 days to one year, and one year and above? The 18 billion units that you mentioned, the opportunity size of. No, 18 billion units is never an opportunity size for CBET. We are talking about cross-border trade, right? Yes, cross-border. Yes. Cross-border trade that we have started recently, about a month back, there we have seen participation from just one entity, which is Nepal, and participation has been quite decent. Some days we have seen overall participation going up to 5% of our Day-Ahead Market. It is ever-increasing. They are meeting their requirement depending on their demand-supply situation. All this quantum that we are talking about is in the spot market. Today, their participation is allowed only in spot market. Whatever numbers that we are sharing, and it is for sure not BU, it must be million units. All this is coming from spot market because that's the only place where this transaction has started. Nothing beyond seven days, nothing up to 365 days. Those are separate contracts. Those are separate bilateral contracts which are going on, which has been going on for a long, long time. Today, what we are saying when CBET has started, it has started purely from the point of view of their participation at our exchange plan. We are the one to start the spot volumes, if that is the right understanding in cross-border as of now. Absolutely. Okay. Thanks a lot, sir. That was really valuable. Thank you. Let me add what Rohit Bajaj said, because IEX, when we started exchange, there was nothing up to a week volume or up to a day. Everything started with converting bilaterals into Day-Ahead and other markets. This is what will happen. Some part of the volume which is currently happening in bilateral, which is a month or a 1-year contract, that part may shift to Day-Ahead Market. People, all our neighboring countries would like to transact at a competitively discovered price. In bilateral, they are not comfortable because They are not comfortable with the prices because whether it's competitive enough or not, always that apprehension is there. We hope that currently what is happening in bilateral, a part of that will shift to Day-Ahead Market. There's nothing which is currently happening on Day-Ahead or week-ahead basis. What is happening on a monthly or yearly, that will shift to Day-Ahead. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Thanvi from Banyan Tree Advisors. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks, Rohit, for the opportunity, and congratulations on both the set of numbers. Thank you. My question was again on the DSM market. You had highlighted in the previous participant's question that we are seeing a shift in terms. What I remember that we launched RTM as a product to make sure that there is a shift from DSM to the RTM. You also highlighted that we are already seeing that shift. However, when you look at the absolute numbers, you don't see that at all, right? You're continuing to see DSM volumes to be there where it were. In fact, in your presentation, you had highlighted that 1% drop from last year, right? On a nine-month comparison basis. It doesn't tie up. Whereas when you look at the bilateral markets, there you see a significant drop in the volumes. How should one look at this? At the end of the day, looking at the overdrawals, limits, slab, everything, the DSM volumes need to go down if we are getting some share from there, right? How should one read into it? See, as I explained earlier also, within the DSM thing you have multiple slabs. I won't go into the same detail again, but what I was trying to tell you was, sometimes what happens is when all of a sudden you have got huge imbalance available, because this could happen because of some tripping, this could happen because of some renewable intermittency, all of a sudden wind generation going up or down. What options were available to you was, it was only grid, right? You can start to draw more, or second option available to distribution company was load shedding. Suppose all of a sudden 600 MW supply gap is there, so immediately you will shut down certain feeders to make up for that loss. Now what has happened with RTM being in place, first of all, that load shedding is not happening because now you have options available where you can immediately come to the market and start buying. Second thing which I said was, where your overdrawal was attracting huge penalty. This quantum was not very high. This quantum was not very high because when they used to watch that 100% penalty is being imposed, they used to take certain decisions of load shedding and other things at their end. What has happened is. Rohit, probably his question is still not being answered. What he said, finally, the numbers should reflect the shift, but numbers are not reflecting the shift. What I can add to the understanding is that with the increased renewables coming into system, probably if nothing, no RTM or other options are not available, would not have been available, probably that time the DSM should have increased. What has not increased is actually coming to the Real-Time Market. That can be explained like this, because as we are going into higher renewable regime, then intermittency and more deviations are likely to take place which is not being reflected. It means that deviations otherwise which would have happened are actually coming to Real-Time Market. Absolutely. Sure. Sure. Also in one of the call, last time around, we had discussed this point about the price at which the penalties are being leveraged is not a block price and a day average price. Yes. Anything of that you can share, like what will happen to the DSM market if there is any change in the regulation regarding the price that is benchmarked for the DSM? Yeah. I think that there is no discussion today happening, but of course, it will be more rational if we are linking prices, the DSM prices with the time block wide prices. Yes. Currently discussion is not taking place, and we have also not raised this issue because we are also not very confident to what extent this will impact volume. We will do our own analysis and then pursue with the CERC. Just to add here, Rajesh sir, when this regulation came somewhere in 2017 or 2018. that time they mentioned very clearly that in a year's time, they are starting this on pilot basis, and within a year's time, they will migrate from RTC average price to time block wise price. It was mentioned there in that particular regulation. For some reason, they have not taken it up, and we have seen increased grid discipline after that. Today, frequency is not changing much, and you will most of the time find frequency in the narrow band of whatever they have designed. That way, that's an excellent point, because going forward, if that has to happen, surely we will see some more conversion from DSM market to RTM market. Yeah. I think that is more because we also missed it and maybe we Yeah. Sure. Sorry, I also missed on the dividend policy part. You had mentioned that we have a policy of 50% profits as payout. However, this year, that payout looks lower than 50%. You did explain something with the annual general meeting notice, I missed on that. Can you repeat that again, please? Yeah. Rohit, I take it. Yeah, please. You rightly said the company has a policy of paying at least 50% of the profits as a dividend. In line with that, in the month of January, we paid the interim dividend of 50% during the [uncertain], there was a cash outflow of almost INR 175 crore. Because of this month, because of the high end, this COVID situation, we have not declared the final dividend. This is as per usual tradition. We declare the AGM notice, that time they said to be reconsidered and announce the dividend amount. How much I can't comment because that is a board prerogative when we look into it, but that will be the due diligence we will consider at that time. Sure. Thanks. I'll get back in this. Thank you so much. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Request to the participants, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants, please limit your question to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, you may rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Swarnim Maheshwari from Edelweiss. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hello, sir. Good evening, and thanks for the opportunity. Sir, two set of questions. First one on the Day-Ahead Market. Now, I believe we will be launching the LDC market somewhere by December. Now, if you see that the demand has basically kind of softened a bit, and it is likely to be there in the low teens for the next two or three months. This has also impacted the volumes for Day-Ahead Market. What we also see is that there is some sort of a revival in the short-term PPAs. My question over here is that, can the DAM volumes be under some pressure from, say, Q1 to Q3 till the time we don't launch the LDC product? That's my first question. The DAM market is there to fulfill certain set of requirements for the market participants. These distribution companies, they analyze their supply, they analyze their cost of supply availability on Day-Ahead basis. On that basis, wherever is the deficit, wherever they want to replace or optimize, they participate in our Day-Ahead platform, and we catch requirement. I don't agree with this, that since the softening of demand has happened, so our volume would be under pressure. As I can recall, last year, in the month of May, volume was down, overall demand was down 15% YoY. That was the month where we registered 40% growth in our volume. It's not purely related to demand. In fact, if you see H1 also last year or Q3 also, where demand has not picked up so, and our volume were doing great in particular Day-Ahead Market. What happens is, Day-Ahead Market is used for the purpose of meeting deficit. If you have shortages, you come to market. Second important thing is when the cheap power is available in the Day-Ahead Market, many distribution companies today, they start to back down their own generation and come to this market to optimize on their power cost. Similarly, if the prices are down, if there is ample availability in the market, we see lot of C&I participation increasing. When the prices are down, they are breaking and their viability increases, and they participate. No reason for us to believe that going forward for, let's say, next quarter 1, 2, 3, we are expecting Day-Ahead Market to be under pressure. LDC is a different segment altogether. We do have bilateral market which has been functional for so many years. In fact, it started much before exchange, this has been doing decent volume year-on-year. As I said, there is about 2,513 billion unit potential which is available, we are in the process of launching this market to capture that. It's not that we are expecting some shift from here to there. Both the markets are independent market, this is as per the global standard. Globally also, you will find there is market available for different time frame. Market is available for annual buy, quarterly buy, monthly buy, Day-Ahead buy, Real-Time buy. All these markets are as per the standard design, which has been adopted by most of the countries globally. Also third point. My best limited understanding was that we are unlikely to go back to 200 million units per day kind of volume that we saw in Q4 specifically. That was my limited point. The demand has softened and then there is a revival of short-term PPAs also. That was my limited point. Hence, in isolation, on absolute basis, the DAM volumes will be strong, but maybe since we have a base effect also, I was talking more from that perspective. That's it. Sir, the second question is on IGX, actually. We have actually almost sold now closer to 45% stake, and there is actually no price discovery, and we appreciate the fact that this was on account of the different of the competition clearly. Just wanted to understand the next 30% where we have to actually get to about 75%, we have to bring it down. In that next 30%, when is this expected to take place? Importantly, can we expect this 30% stake sale to be at premium to the face value? You are very right. Actually, we have divested about 46%- 47%, we don't intend to sell this further 30% in near future. We still have to take a call that when we will be doing it and at what premium that will be done. I can't say anything on that because the board will take a call. Overall, this investment is not going to happen beyond this 50% anytime soon. Currently, what is there, maybe next, some small investment can happen to one of the strategic investors, which can happen maybe in a month or so. Okay. Beyond that, we are not looking for any further disinvestment, and premium we will fix as we go along. Yeah, correct. The next 25%, we have got a long window of about four to five years. Yeah. We have four years' time, so that we will decide when to do that. I'd just like to add here, if you see, the stake sale, what was done was from the strategic point of view. It was not the intention of just giving the equity to someone, to the financial investor. Company had done it to chicken the players or the structure in this. Going forward, we see, as Mr. Nandkumar has said, except one or two, the key significant players which they are willing to take, there is no intention to divest further till the mandatory regulatory requirement is there to bring our stake to 25%. This should be giving the comfort enough to the investors to understand the structure. Fair enough, sir. Got it. Thank you so much. Wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bilasha Chitali from Dalal & Broacha. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. Sir, my first question is towards the CERC's order, like CERC's approval for the new exchange. This is like Pranurja, which is in offering. What is update on that and where are we placed, whenever that exchange is coming on stream? This is my first question. Very recently there was order from CERC where registration has been approved by them. Now what we understand is they have to file business rules and they also have to share their technology platform with CERC and obtain approval. That's the status. As far as we are concerned, we have been maintaining always that we welcome competition. What we feel is it is just a start. As exchanges, we are doing only 6%. Two exchanges are there for so long time, and we have to go a long way. Our focus should be on evolving right market designs. There is lot which is to be done. In fact, if you go by National Electricity Policy Draft, which has been released by government very recently, it talks about exchanges contributing 25% in the total consumption by FY 2024. If those are our targets, and if you want to go beyond that, if you want to route entire generation through exchange, and if you want to use exchanges for the purpose of renewable capacity addition, if you have plans for CFD, and all these are things are being considered at various levels in the government and by the regulators and everybody. If those are things which is to be done, we always believe that competition is required. It will eventually help the end consumers. They will have more competitive power which would be available. As an exchange, we would be able to do some more innovation, create more customer-centric products, and everybody will gain out of that competition. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Sir, after approval, what is likely timeline for the actual launch of the exchange? What it is according to you? It's hard to say. It depends on individual company. One thing is clear, what I mentioned, three months time has been given by CERC for the purpose of obtaining these approvals. They have to file. Beyond that, we are not aware of how much time they will take. Developing technology, and since not so many new products are there, it is a constant continual improvement basis. We have to do so many things as far as technology is concerned. It is not so easy thing. You have to invest time, you have to invest money to get all those things in place. Rohit, there was a media story which said that they are expected by year-end. That is what you can take it, because it must be some statement from that Pranurja, which has been recorded in the media as well. They are expecting to start operations by year-end. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Secondly, sir, my other question is on GDAM. You mentioned about the GDAM volume, from where the volumes are coming when we are launching GDAM, wherein as you mentioned, most of the green energy is with PPAs. The PPAs are already signed for whatever these power plants are coming. From there, what kind of opportunity we are seeing in that product, say, GDAM, how much volumes we are seeing over a longer period of time coming up through green energy? I'll share one example. See, when we started exchange in 2008, at that time, there was no concept of merchant generators. Except for one odd IPP, where they had no tie-up available, they were selling at exchange. Otherwise, entire capacity in the country was tied up under long-term PPA. Now, if you see today, over the years, what has happened, today we have got 30 GW of merchant capacity available in the country where there are no tie-ups. People are investing in the projects where they want to create capacity, which is solely dependent on the market. They participate in bilateral market, they participate in the spot market, and try to maximize their revenue. This is what we have seen, and it has its own phases. Initially, some of the IPPs, they started keeping just 15% power for market, remaining 85% they preferred long-term PPAs. Same thing is or will happen in renewable as well. Today, as I said, there are not many generators where they have tie-up, but there are many generators where their PPAs are coming to an end. There are many generators who are following, who are watching these prices, those who are taking reference of these prices, and then they are planning to create some capacity only for supply under merchant route within mid to short term. What we do is, first we create marketplace. Whatever is available in the market will come to the market, and then market will start giving signals to all the people who are willing to make investments in the sector and take position and try to create capacity and sell. Rajesh, you want to add something more here? No. You have covered very well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure sir. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Varun Goenka from Nippon India Mutual Fund. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, Rohit and IEX team. Congratulations for a fantastic performance. Thank you. You guys have been delivering for over 10 years now, very credible. I think you've answered it in very good detail. Thank you so much. You mentioned a few technology initiatives. If you could lay down some details as to what you have done in FY 2021, what are the key initiatives and implementations in FY 2022, what is it solving at your end, and what is it solving at the customer's end? It would be really good to hear. Yeah. Amit, would you like to answer this? Yeah, sure. Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Regarding the technology initiatives that we have taken in the last financial year. Some of the key ones. One is that we launched automated bidding option for the customers through the application programming interface. With the launch of Real-Time Market, where the customers had to do bidding 48 times during the day, it was important to drive the growth and adoption of Real-Time Market to provide customers with an option to integrate their systems directly with our systems through API, so that the whole bidding process can be automated. That is something we launched right from day one of the launch of the Real-Time Market. Some of our large members are already integrated to this automated API bidding solutions, and almost close to 60%-70% of the cleared volume in Real-Time Market actually is for the bids that gets placed to the automated API bidding model. That is one of the options that we did. The second option was we continuously, from a product and technology perspective, we are innovating and identifying how we can make the whole process seamless and easy for customers to interact with our exchange platform. With that objective, we also looked at opportunity wherein we can provide customers with an option of auto-forwarding their uncleared bids of Day-Ahead Market into Term Ahead Market. For example, as we know that once the Day-Ahead Market ends, post that, customers have an option of placing uncleared bids into the Day Ahead Contingency Market. The existing process was that if there is uncleared bid, then they have to then create the bid for placing in the Day Ahead Contingency Market and place that bid manually. We built a solution which was a option of automating this whole carry forward of uncleared Day-Ahead Market bid into a Day Ahead Contingency Market, and if it doesn't get cleared in the Day Ahead Contingency, it gets carried forward to the intraday market. Customer has that option to pick up that option as well. Those are one or two examples of solutions that we provided which eases the bidding experience for the customers. In addition to that, we also introduced some of enhancements that enables easy view of the existing bids. For that, we introduced a dynamic market watch functionality in the Term Ahead Market, which enabled customers a very easy view of the active bids which are present in the market. Based on that, for the continuous matching products, looking at the dynamic market watch, they can plan to put in bids and be at the right prices to do the matching. That is another example of a customer-facing initiative that really helps the customers. In addition to that, we have built in a lot of automation of some of the existing processes, which helps us provide a much more faster outcome to the customers. One of the examples being we have done automated integration with our clearing banks, which now enables us to provide payment credit even 3-4 hours faster than what we used to do earlier. Which means that we are earlier on most of the time the credit used to happen the second half, and now we are able to do that credit in the first half itself, so that customers who want to utilize that money to invest in the funds or in the activity. There are a lot of afternoon funds, which have afternoon cutoffs. They have the money right in the morning for them to use it for the investment and other working capital needs. These are some of the examples of automation that we have done and technology that we have used to enhance the customer experience. That is from a customer perspective. Then there are a lot of process automation that we have done within our internal company processes, which makes our company internal processes much more effective. We have done a SAP rollout within the organization, which makes a lot of internal processes much more effective. There are a lot of business process automation that we have done, which makes the whole market operations processes through which we provide the registration and the scheduling and settlement facilities to the customers. That becomes much more effective. Very recently, we have launched the web-based platform for our customers. One of the key initiatives that we are also working on is to provide all our existing platform features through our web-based platform to the customers and also going forward to a mobile-based platform. We have in the last week of April, launched our web-based features platform to the customers. That is something that we have done till now. Going forward, some of the key things that we are going to do is extension of the web-based platform to provide billing for all the products through the web-based platform itself, and also introduction of a mobile-based platform, which will provide a lot of deep data insights and also going forward provide the billing option to the customers. That is one important thing that we are in the current financial year going to work on providing. Second, I mentioned about the auto carry forward between Day-Ahead and Day Ahead Contingency. With the success of that auto carry forward functionality, we are working on building a auto carry forward integrated pipeline for all the different product segments so that customers could have the option of using the auto carry forward functionality to carry forward. Just to give example, suppose a customer wants that a bid placed in the existing Green Term Ahead Market if it doesn't get cleared, let's say it's a sell bid, it should automatically move to the Real-Time Market. Similarly, we have identified all the different auto carry forward flow, and we are building a pipeline which provides option to the customers to utilize that feature to ease the whole bidding process. These are some of the initiatives that we are working upon in this financial year. In the subsequent quarterly earnings call, we will keep you updated about what we have done and what more we plan to do from transforming customer experience using technology or product. Thank you so much, Amit. Always great to hear you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much for attending this. We value your time. Today is a holiday for some of us, and still we could do it. Thank you so much. We again expect you to stay safe, be cautious. This is just a passing phase. All of us together will surely win. Thanks from the management team. Thank you from all of us here to all the participants. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thanks. Bye.