Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Info Edge India Limited Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today from management, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman, Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter and Managing Director, and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Director and CFO. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the detailed disclaimer included in the presentation for good order's sake. Kindly note that this conference is being recorded and all the participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A after the presentation concludes. I'll hand over the call to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you and over to you, Hitesh. Thank you, Anand and Vineet. A very good evening, everyone, and welcome to all of you to Info Edge's earnings call for the first quarter of FY 2026. We will begin with an update on the standalone financial performance, then cover the performance of each segment along with the commentary on each business. Of course, we'll have Q&A towards the end. For the standalone businesses in Q1 of FY 2026, billings were INR 644 crore, a YoY growth of 11%, and revenue was INR 736 crore, a YoY growth of 15%. Billings and revenue, including Swayam and DoSelect, were at INR 665 crore and INR 757 crore, a YoY growth of 12% and 16% respectively. Operating profits at a standalone level grew by 10% year-on- year to INR 250 crore, and the operating margin stood at 34%. The standalone business generated cash from operations before taxes of INR 180 crore in Q1 of FY 2026. The cash generation from the recruitment business was INR 196 crore. The non-recruitment businesses at an aggregate level were cash negative at INR 11 crore in Q1 of FY 2026. EPS before exceptional items, net of tax and deferred tax for Q1 of FY 2026 stood at INR 4. Post bid of shares, a YoY growth of 11%. The cash balance of Info Edge, including wholly owned subsidiaries at the end of June 2025, stood at INR 4,828 crore. The headcount as of June 2025 end was 6,174. Moving on to segment-wise performance and starting with the recruitment business. In Q1 of FY 2026, billings grew by 9% to INR 470 crore, and revenue grew by 15% to INR 542 crore. The operating profit improved by 12% year on year to INR 284 crore, and the operating profit margin was 53%. Cash generated from the recruitment operation was INR 196 crore. Billings growth in Q1 moderated compared to the mid to high teens growth witnessed in the previous few quarters. This was primarily due to multiple macro events during the quarter and a general demand slowdown across certain sectors, which impacted investment decisions relating to people amongst companies. We observed a trend of contract deferrals by some clients towards the end of the quarter, which is usually the peak period for closures. As a result, renewal activity was impacted, leading to a moderation in overall billings growth. Several segments and sectors such as GCCs, technology companies, retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, however, continued to post double-digit growth. On the other hand, segments like recruitment consultants, IT services, BPM, BFSI, and infrastructure experienced a moderation with growth tapering to low single digits in Q1. Despite this, the jobs peak index and recruiter engagement metrics, including CV searches and views, remained resilient, indicating steady hiring during the quarter. Niche and adjacent businesses like iimjobs.com and HIREST, Naukri Gulf, and Naukri FastForward, the candidate services business, sustained their growth trajectory in Q1 of FY 2026 with the year-on-year billings growth of 41%, 18%, and 15% respectively. Our employer branding solutions offered across various platforms such as Naukri, iimjobs.com, HIREST, and Ambition Box also continue to grow well. We are focusing on strengthening these offerings and deepening our market penetration. The JobHai business, while currently operating primarily as a freemium model, focused on select markets, maintains strong platform metrics and continues to grow revenue at a rapid rate, of course, on a small base. On the job seeker front, the Naukri platform now hosts approximately 108 million resumes and added an average of 26,000 new resumes daily during Q1 of FY 2026. Marketing expenses were elevated in Q1 and can be broadly classified into the following buckets: IPL-related branding campaigns, which are once-a-year activities, focus efforts to further strengthen our job seeker database, especially in emerging cities and non-IT segments, and some increased investments in smaller businesses such as iimjobs.com, Naukri Gulf, and JobHai as they gain scale. These expenses are part Over the last few quarters to maybe, I don't know what, 8%, 9%, 10% of our revenue. It's not as if we need to spend this money on Naukri. We can even spend 4% and we'll be fine for some time, right? Now what we are also doing is spending a little more on the new businesses that we are building, like HIREST, like the businesses which are doing better than earlier, like Naukri Gulf, where we are not a, you know, we are a reasonably strong player, but it's not as if we dominate the market. We are spending more on JobHai, which is a new business we are building. Some of these investments need to be made up front, right? We don't capitalize them, but they are important to build brands in the long run. Naukri, you know, we spent a little more this quarter because we were on IPL, we can moderate that spend going forward. That's Naukri. In 99acres.com and jeevansathi.com, I think these businesses require substantial investment in marketing for the foreseeable future, right? We are trying to gain share in these segments, we're trying to grow these businesses faster than the market and than our competitors. We have upped our brand, our ad spending in 99acres.com over the last few quarters. We have upped our ad spend in jeevansathi.com also. We expect these businesses to grow faster going forward, or grow fast, not faster, grow fast going forward. We want to gain market share. I think it's very important for the long run because in the end, it's market share which matters the most. That's what gives you pricing power in the market. Marketing investments in these two verticals will continue. In these verticals, we may be spending a lot more than 10%, 12% of our revenue on marketing, right? In shiksha.com, it's a tiny business. We don't spend a lot of money on marketing. We are like, but you know what, like I said, there are some headwinds there because it's a content business. Content businesses globally, if you study what's happening after these chatbots, are getting impacted because a lot of the searches and queries are getting answered on ChatGPT and Gemini and, you know, itself. We are experimenting to figure out how we can build different funnels to get more users on the platform. We are experimenting. Shiksha.com is, you know, it's okay right now, but we are trying to figure out how we can de-risk it from whatever we are sort of seeing happen to the publishing industry globally. Therefore, we are experimenting with building a marketing funnel there. Right now, the marketing spend in shiksha.com is tiny. It could go up going forward. It's different sort of strategies and different approaches in different businesses depending on market dynamics, competitive intensity, and realities. Thanks, Hitesh, for the elaborate answers. I'll fall back in the queue. Thanks, [Avi]. Next question is from Sachin Salgaonkar from Bank of America. Sachin, go ahead and ask your question. Thanks for the opportunity. First question, Hitesh, I wanted a bit more color in terms of slowing, in terms of billing growth in Naukri.com. I understand it was on the back of, let's say, a soft macro and a demand slowdown. Any more color you could give in terms of is it the GCCs, ITs, non-ITs where you're seeing slowdown and where things are fine? In particular, I saw GCCs being a strong contributor in the past. I wanted to get a bit more color in terms of how billings growth is holding up for GCCs. Yeah, I think I just, I did give out this number. GCC growth for us, you know, we saw moderation in growth with segments like with recruitment consultants and with IT services companies, BPM, BFSI, and infrastructure in these sectors. On the other hand, we saw reasonably good growth with technology companies, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and GCCs. I think GCC growth even last quarter was 17% or so for us. Is this the same billings growth or is this the revenue growth you're talking about? In the lineup, billings growth, got it. Got it. That was question one. Question two, again, a follow-up to the question which was earlier asked by Vivek. This is largely trying to understand how should one think in terms of spending towards advertisement. One way to think is if growth slows down, then could the company spend more on marketing and vice versa? If growth picks up, then what's perhaps the need to spend on marketing? Is that a factor also to be considered apart from some of the factors you mentioned as an answer to the earlier question? So, you know, in the core Naukri.com business, if growth slows down because there's a, because of softness in demand, we don't need to spend more on marketing, right? Because, you know, there's no shortage of job seekers there. Where we are spending more within the Naukri.com, I mean, we were generally off media for a while. We were spending and growth was looking up, so we were okay. We continue to spend on the blue-collar business, for example. That's a business we are building from scratch. You know, that requires investment, so that marketing spend will continue to grow. We are spending a little more than we used to on the Naukri Gulf business because we have been seeing good growth there for the last seven, eight quarters. We are gaining share. We are spending a little more than, we are spending a little bit on our HIREST business, which is a premium tech hiring platform that we're building. Both iimjobs.com and HIREST have been doing really well for us. They're growing 40% YoY. These are some investments and some small cities, like we now are in 80 cities. We've opened new offices. We need to support these offices with some marketing, local marketing. We continue to spend a little bit on that. It's not as if we have to spend this money, you know, to grow our business. If growth slows down, we can moderate our spend, especially if there's not enough, if there's not much competition. In 99acres.com and jeevansathi.com, it's a different story. We are gaining share. We are executing well. We are growing our businesses reasonably solidly. Our metrics are looking very good. You know, all the metrics we track, platform metrics we track are looking really solid. Jeevansathi.com is the fastest growing matrimony business. It's gaining share. 99acres.com has been growing much faster than its competitors for the last few quarters now. Again, it's been gaining share. We are encouraged by the return that we are seeing on our investment in marketing in both these platforms. Of course, we are doing a lot of other stuff as well. It's not just marketing. I think these investments will continue. What is the other thing we need to understand is that, you know, we are cash-rich. In times when, you know, when markets are slow, maybe sometimes competition sort of slows down the stock spending. We can afford to spend. If you spend in a market where others are not spending, it helps you gain share because there's just less competition for users, right? I think these spends will continue. Got it. Final question, trying to understand the impact of AI on businesses. Now, you did call out the impact on shiksha.com, but are we seeing something similar as an impact, let's say, on 99acres.com or Naukri.com, or is it largely restricted towards a business like shiksha.com? You mean the AI that's happening outside the boards, or how we are leveraging AI? Because that I just took you through. Not how you guys are leveraging AI, but the impact per se on the competition on AI in terms of the business getting impacted per se because of the bots and what's happening in tech companies and so on. Yeah, so far we have not seen any significant impact on the Naukri.com and 99acres.com business because of, you know, these AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini and others. In traffic and on our content platforms like shiksha.com and Ambition Box, to some extent in naukri.com, you know, has been impacted. We're trying to figure out how to sort of, you know, do a better job there. So far we have not seen an impact in jeevansathi.com and naukri.com and 99acres.com. Any material impact, I'd put it this way. Perfect. Thank you. Absolutely. Next question from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. One, Hitesh, just wanted to double click on the initial remark you made. You said a lot happened in the second half of last quarter and some clients deferred purchases, reopened contract, etc. Was this specific to certain categories of clients or were you referring to IT services clients here? IT services, some consultants, mostly last customers. Got it. In general, do you think your ability to take pricing action, obviously, therefore will continue to be a bit difficult here? Do you have pricing action levers left in any particular segments as you look forward into FY 2026? I'll just add another question on it. If I look at this other segment that you're now disclosing in your billings, where I think last year every quarter you had 18%- 20% odd growth. I know you've called out certain sectors slowing this quarter, but were there any temporary impacts as well because it went from 18% to 7%? Yeah, that's exactly what I talked about. You have those four buckets within your billings growth, right? Yeah. You think that's basically non-IT. We have BFSI and all, which slowed down in the quarter. There's a non-IT. This was 17%, 18%, 19% odd every quarter last year. This quarter is about 7%. I'm just wondering if there was, I mean, is 7% inclusive of any one-offs there, or is that how you should think about it going forward, at least near term? Listen, till Q3, Q4 last year was very good for us. All domestic economy is doing well. Even IT services companies have started hiring. Growth in almost every segment was in double digits, including consultants have started hitting 10%, 12%. Now, things slowed down in Q1 because of whatever happened, especially towards the second half of Q1. Till first half, we were hoping to grow in the teens once again, but things did sort of, growth did moderate substantially towards the second half of the quarter. It moderated for across segments. Consultants were hit, IT services companies were hit, some domestic economy sectors were also hit, like BFSI and infrastructure, and maybe for different reasons. I don't know the reasons, right? I can't comment on them beyond a point. Some sectors like healthcare and manufacturing and others, on the retail, etc., continue to do well on the domestic side. Now, going forward, a lot will depend on, see, fundamentally, global demand, which determines what happens to IT services companies, and which then determines their hiring, and domestic demand, which determines what happens in the non-IT companies mostly in the Indian market, right? Of course, the third thing is all the new stuff that we are doing. Like I said, some of our businesses continue to grow at 20%, 30%, 40%, but they are like maybe 20% of the total business, in Naukri. Pricing now, see, pricing, we get our pricing. I mean, we believe that we sort of are still the most, it's the cheapest way to hire, the fastest way to hire, the easier way to hire. Normally, it's easier to take price increases when there's a reasonably decent market for hiring. It's harder to push through price increases when demand is soft, right? We'll wait and see. We'll wait and see, and see how things play out in the next one or two quarters. Got it. Thank you. Thanks, Vijit. Next question from Deep Shah from BK Securities. Deep, go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, hi. Hi, Hitesh. Thanks for the opportunity. Some of the questions were answered, but I had a follow-up on the marketing front. Over the last two years, if we take the same quarter, we've seen like a 20%-25% CAGR kind of increase in marketing. I think you made it very clear that a lot of it is going towards naukri.com. What is happening? Are we expanding the audience that we are reaching out to, or is the advertising market becoming a lot more expensive? When you spend on IPL, is that property becoming a lot more expensive? We're reaching out to more markets. If you could actually help us understand, is it that the new initiatives that you have have a slightly different advertising funnel which you are looking to tap into? Within naukri.com, you're talking about? Yes. See, it's like this. Let's look at the spend in three different buckets. One is brand marketing, like just the kind of stuff you do on IPL. Then there is regular performance marketing, the kind of marketing we do to get more CVs and so on and so forth. Third is marketing spend on some of the newer initiatives, like iimjobs.com, HIREST, Gulf, etc., which are slightly different, and JobHai, right? Now, bucket number one, IPL, our team felt that we had been out of media for a while and so on. They wanted to sort of go back and make some noise. That's not what you need to do every quarter to grow your business. We can live without it for a while if you want to, right? Regular performance marketing spend will continue. Performance marketing spends are a function. The cost of, let's say, acquiring a CV is a function of competition and, of course, how actively job seekers are looking, right? Like I mentioned, we get 26,000 new CVs a day. If it becomes 25,000, will it make a difference to our business? No, right? Can we push marketing to make it 30,000? Very hard, right? A lot of them come organically anyway. Performance marketing spends are not very high. If we can live with a performance marketing spend of, let's say, even INR 30-40 crore a year, that should be enough for naukri.com. How much we want to spend on JobHai is a function of how fast we think JobHai can grow and how fast we want to expand. We are making those investments right now. We are getting some results. If we get even better results, we'll make even more investments. This is a new business that we're building for the future. The marketing spend gets clubbed, but frankly, it's going towards building a brand new business, right? iimjobs.com and HIREST, because they're growing at 40%, we are spending a little bit, not too much on them because, again, we would like a business to actually get organic traction. We supplement and complement that traction with marketing. It's not as if we force marketing to drive people's business to grow a business. Naukri Gulf, we've been growing at 20% for the last three years now. It's become a solid business for us. It's profitable. We see an opportunity there. We are doing a little more marketing than earlier. That's all. These are the three buckets in which we spend. The branding bucket, you can do without for a long time. It's not necessary. The other two buckets are perhaps, you know, we would want to sort of continue with. Okay, understood. This is useful. Thanks and all the best. Thanks, Deep. Next question from Nikhil Choudhary from Nuvama. Nikhil, go ahead and ask your question. Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, just want more color on non-IT, non-GCC business. While, you know, IT services obviously had tariff-related uncertainty, but on the non-IT part, be it industrial, be it BFSI, we have been growing in double digit for quite some time, despite the underlying economy had its own problems, right? We have discussed in the past that, you know, Naukri has been defying the gravity. Despite the slowdown, we are only accelerating. What changed this quarter? Is it like finally the investment or marketing is not generating enough ROI, or slowdown is much more pronounced than what we are, you know, or maybe impacted us with a delay, something like that? Yeah. You know, it's not got nothing to do with marketing. See, it's basically like I mentioned, towards the second half of the quarter, I think there was just some sort of uncertainty, more uncertainty because of maybe the geopolitical situation, maybe because, I don't know, some other reason. I think just things just slowed down. People wanted to wait and watch. I think it was more like that, okay, listen, let's just, we don't know where it's going. Can we just hang on for some more time? Do we really need to hire people right away, or can we wait? Perhaps it was a bit of that. That uncertainty to some extent continues, right? Even with all these tariffs and all this other stuff. It could be impacting some industries. It could be impacting hiring. BFSI for sure, you know, got impacted. Infrastructure, I think, was also hiring was also slow for a couple of months. Certain non-IT sectors continue to do well, but certain sectors were impacted. All this happened only towards in, you know, it was all okay till Q4. In fact, we were accelerating. Growth was accelerating from Q2 to Q3 to Q4. It went up and up. Suddenly, you know, people pressed the brakes. Companies sort of slowed down towards the quarter. Now will this growth come back going forward? I don't know, right? Hard for me to say. July was good. We're not complaining. It was good for 99acres.com also. It was good for naukri.com also. Given what happened last quarter, I don't want to say anything about what will happen, you know, going forward. It's just, there's too much uncertainty right now in the environment. Got it, Hitesh. I think more importantly, why we were so surprised is because Q4 was so strong, right? We don't see such a stark difference in two quarters. The point you are making is that the second half was weak. If you look in terms of news and headlines, the first half had tariff-related news. Even the war situation was over by May 15, 2023, between India and Pakistan. I don't think Israel or Iran would have an impact, especially on the domestic side of the business. That's where it's a bigger surprise and something which we are unable to digest in terms of. What happens in our businesses, see, M1 plus M2 is only 50% of the quarter, right? A lot of our renewals are, you know, because it's a renewal business, subscription business, you know, they are, I mean, month three is equal to month one plus month two in any quarter on the average. Within month three, the last five days of the month are half the month. That's how it works. Got it, Hitesh. Basically, surprise came a little late. Yeah. Yeah. Hitesh, you want to talk a little bit about July or not right now? No, July, I've already said, listen, but it's very hard. I mean, it's been good. I mean, like I guess mentioned earlier. My understanding, and I could be wrong, you know, Hitesh Oberoi is closer to the operating business than I am. My understanding is that some sort of connections got deferred in June, and then they came in the first week of July. It's simply because people may have been a little uncertain, a little uneasy, you know, where's the world heading, where are tariffs going to go, what is happening on the geopolitics, what's happening on, you know, more than the wars, it was the tariffs also, I think, that might have impacted what's going to happen to the economy. Because it was volatile, it's possible that some people got dismissed, but I'm not saying that there will be a recovery in Q2 definitely. July gave us some reason to feel slightly encouraged. Am I right in that? I did mention that the July collection growth in naukri.com was 19%. Billing growth was about 13.5%, 15%. In 99acres.com, it was also much better than the previous quarter. You know, given the uncertainty, I mean, I don't know whether this is going to. We don't know. We don't know, but there were some encouraging signs in July. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Thanks, Hitesh. Thanks, Sanjeev. Good luck for coming, Vivek. Thanks, Nikhil. Next question is from Swapnil from JM Financial. Swapnil, go ahead and ask your question. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I would like to take forward the July discussion now, which has been there right now. See, you did mention that July billings were around 13%, 14%. At the same time, you were saying there was a spillover impact also there and benefit in a way. If I were to X that, the spillover benefit, the underlying growth then for the month of July would have been much lower. Will that be a fair statement to say? That is why the concern that if underlying growth was not as much, then, you know, extrapolating that gives us, keeps us below 10% growth for the entire quarter. I don't know. Like I said, month one is only 20% of the quarter. We don't know how things will pan out going forward. I don't want to make any forecast here. Will we spend the 13%, 19% that you mentioned? That is looking good only because of this. I mean, look, on 15th May, 15th May last quarter, I would have told you we'll grow at 15%. It looks like we'll grow at 15%, right? We ended up with whatever we ended up with, right? Now, if you ask me today, if I go by what people are saying, maybe an X number is possible. I don't know what's going to happen now with all this uncertainty around us. It's hard to, now all I can say, for example, in 99acres.com, jeevansathi.com is more predictable. It's a consumer business. You know, it's not as if it gets impacted by what happens around us so much. 99acres.com, our metrics are very solid. The number of inquiries on our platform, etc., etc., we are gaining share. We are, you know, all that is looking very good. Will it translate into revenue growth this quarter? I don't know, right? July was very good, actually very solid for 99acres.com. Will it continue? Hard to say. Naukri.com is the hardest to predict because it depends on the domestic economy also. It also depends on what happens in the U.S. Understood. Okay. Let me take this conversation forward and ask you this question. Now, if we were to maintain the margins, right, at 56% that you did last year on a PBD level, right, in the naukri.com business, what would be the billings growth that you would need for this full year to get to those margins on a YoY basis to maintain flattish? Because you're at 9% from what I remember from previous call commentaries. You said there could be some dimension on the margins. That is where I'm trying to. Yeah, I don't know. Have you done the math, Vineet? I mean. I guess. Keep going. I was saying, billing growth may, if it continues to be in single digits while the revenue growth of last year, two, three quarters was still mid-teens, high teens. From revenue, it will still continue to have a spillover of benefit in terms of revenue growth. It should not hit margin immediately in FY 2026. If this slow growth continues for longish, then maybe FY 2027 can get impacted in terms of margins. See, we don't want to slow down investments in AI. We don't want to slow down our investment in building the blue collar job platform. We don't want to slow down our investments in 99acres.com and jeevansathi.com, we're gaining share. In markets like these, if we are cash-rich, we should be able to utilize that to our benefit. Core Naukri.com growth is, you know, and the adjacent businesses are also growing. The Naukri FastForward business, the Naukri Gulf business, the iimjobs.com business, the HIREST business, core Naukri.com where we have a bit of a challenge. Let's see. Let's see. Just a corollary question to that. Let's just say you happen to grow 8%, 9% only in the near term, you know, in the next couple of quarters. Will you start focusing on margin or cut down on some spend? No, what we may not do, for example, what we may cut down on is branding spend. We may not do, you know, IPL type of advertising for the next few quarters, right? We'll say, okay, we can manage marketing costs. We can say, okay, we'll try and remain at the same level as last year in Naukri.com, right? Still, we would want to continue to invest in blue collar JobHai, right? We'll want to invest in the businesses that are growing fast, like iimjobs.com and HIREST growing at 40%. We'll continue to do more there. We'll continue to invest in the Gulf. Yeah, we can still manage with the marketing expenses the same as last year. We will maybe, we'll continue to invest in AI. When I say AI, one is, of course, the people. Two is the servers and the GPUs and some of those things which we need to invest in for the long term, right? We may not want to delay those investments. I think they are important and strategic for the long run. Got it, Hitesh. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Very clear answers. Thank you. Thanks, Swapnil. Vineet, that was the last question we had. Anand, there is a question in the chat box as well. Hitesh, please read it out. On absolute terms, what is the range of marketing spend? Are we internally comfortable spending for the remainder of the year on a quarterly basis? Like I said, in 99acres.com and jeevansathi.com, there's no limit. We can go to any extent if we get good returns and if we think we are gaining share and it'll help us in the long run. We look at marketing as an investment in these verticals. In naukri.com, you know, if growth slows down, we may say, okay, let's stay at the same level as last year. Yeah, thanks, Hitesh. There is a follow-up question from Vivek Aggarwal from Member Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question. Thanks for the follow-up. On investments, Sanjeev, I have one question for you. Now that Ant Financial has fully exited Zomato, sorry, Eternal, is there any thought process that some of the long-term investors, yourself included, also would want to recycle capital and perhaps come up with a schedule for monetization because that business no longer requires capital, perhaps, which is why secondaries are happening? You're on mute, sir. Mute. Yeah, people are selling not because the Zomato business does not require capital. They are selling for whatever reason they haven't told us. It may be because, you know, they've achieved their profit objectives. They've got something to use for their money. I think our willingness to sell in any of those two businesses is going to be indexed to our perception and belief about growth in the future. Will we maximize shareholder value more by selling now or more by holding? That is how we'll do it. We discuss this constantly in board meetings and among ourselves. As of now, we have no announcements to make over there. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vivek. Vineet, that was the last question on the, I think there's another question on the Q&A. That's answered, yeah. Okay. That's already answered. Thank you, everyone, for being on the call and have a great evening. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Thanks, thanks. Bye. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us.