Thank you, Sagar, and a very warm welcome to our earnings call today. We have on the call with us today Mr.

Rashesh Shah, Chairman and MD of Edelweiss, and Ms. Ananya Suneja, CFO, Edelweiss Financial Services.

We hope you all had a chance to review the investor presentation that we filed with the exchanges earlier today. During our discussion, we will be making references to it.

Please take a moment to review the Safe Harbor statement in our presentation. We will be making statements that may be forward-looking in nature and hence may involve certain risks and uncertainties.

With that, I'll hand over the call to Rashesh to begin the proceedings. Thank you all for being here again.

Over to you, Rashesh.

Good afternoon to all of you, and a warm welcome for earnings call for the quarter and the year ended March '26. Thank you once again, all of you, for joining us.

I was supposed to start with the geopolitical tensions and oil price, but I guess all of us know the headwinds that India is currently facing. In spite of the headwinds, we do believe India remains relatively well-positioned.

In the businesses we are, we don't see a very large impact of this headwind except at the India macro level. We do think there is some amount of pain, the inflationary risk and the geopolitics.

For the next five, six months, there is some pain. When we talk to investors, we see that they also have the same hypothesis, but I think there is some near-term pain, but India seems to be positioned enough to be resilient to the pain.

The pain is not going to be there, but I think we feel that India will withstand the pain and come out of this strongly. At Edelweiss level, you would have seen the investor presentation.

We had growth in the consolidated profit after tax and the key metrics for the operating businesses. Our consol PAT has grown by 27%.

This was in spite of some exceptional items—I'll speak about that—in a lot of our businesses because of the labor code impact, the GST impact on our life insurance business. With all of that, post-minority investment, our profits have gone up, profit after tax, from ₹399 to ₹547 crore.

A 27% increase in that PAT. There have been some headwinds in the fourth quarter on a lot of our businesses because of the market volatility, the treasury income impact in the mutual fund and our even corporate treasury because of the March volatility.

There has been some impact, but as we've seen, markets have stabilized in April, so that has been fairly stable. All other businesses continue to grow.

Alternative asset management, FPAUM has grown by 32% year-on-year at ₹44,000 crore. Mutual fund AUM, equity AUM is now grown by 25% to ₹78,000 crore.

Our MSME disbursements have gone, obviously, very largely by 200% because we have started scaling it up again. Housing finance disbursements have grown by 27%.

Our GI business had a growth of 28% in GWP, and LI has grown by 11% in AUM, and AUM has now crossed ₹10,000 crore. Our ARC also had a good year.

ARC recoveries were 8,590. So ₹8,590 is extremely good.

ARC is always a very paradoxical thing because the more you recover, the more your AUM keeps on falling down. It's always good to recover because that means you are reducing the risk in the portfolio and returning money to the banks who are holding the SRs.

We continue to grow on that. Before going into strategic updates, let me give two or three special updates, and I've got some queries and questions from a few of you in the last couple of hours on that.

The first one is on insurance breakeven. Insurance, both the insurance businesses put together, for the year had a loss of almost 200 and ₹16 crore, which was an increase from last year, which was about 100 and ₹70 crore or so.

The loss had gone up in insurance business instead of going down because we have been working towards breakeven. The way to look at the insurance business is there is almost ₹110 crore exceptional item, largely the GST impact on life insurance, which was a one-time one.

We are not talking about the recurring impact, which we are managing and we'll get to breakeven even in spite of that. Out of the 159 negative of the life insurance business, almost 70 is from the GST impact, and then we had the labor code impact on both the businesses.

There has been an exceptional hit on both the insurance businesses, which our estimate is about ₹110 crore. If you take that away, then the minus number is ₹100 crore as compared to ₹170 crore of the last year.

There is a significant improvement on the performance of the insurance businesses if you remove the impact of the exceptional items, which are truly one-off, which are not going to recur in the coming years. Along with that, we still remain committed that we will be breakeven for the year FY '27 in our insurance businesses.

We are strengthening ourselves, we are focusing a lot on that, and even without Ind AS, because Ind AS will come a year after now, even without Ind AS coming in, we will reach breakeven. Obviously, as I said earlier, if Ind AS comes, we are breakeven even now.

Without Ind AS, as per I-GAAP, we expect to be breakeven in the insurance businesses in the coming year. On question number two, which has been on the operating businesses, our operating businesses also have shown a fall in PAT from ₹566 crore to ₹520 crore.

There is a ₹46 crore fall in the operating businesses, but as you have seen in the presentation, there is an exceptional item, and those exceptional item is about ₹134 crore. If you adjust for the exceptional item, the businesses have actually grown by 17% at a PAT level, where 5 where ₹566 has gone to 600 and ₹40-odd or something.

There has been a fall in the underlying businesses profit, the operating profit of the underlying businesses by ₹46 crore, but that is after a ₹130 crore exceptional item on that. Adjusting for exceptional item, we still see that on an apples-to-apples basis, the operating businesses have shown a 17% growth.

The operating businesses also have an ESOP cost embedded in that, which will be recurring, we're not removing that. With ESOP cost, we expect to continue to grow our operating business profit at approximately 20% per year.

That is what we have maintained in the last four, five years. This year also, apple-to-apple, we are at 17%, but we have had this exceptional item, which is mainly has been gratuity and impact of the new labor code and the GST impact that has come, which I think all of you are aware about.

The third question I wanted to answer was on the corporate debt. Our corporate debt is about ₹6,400 crore as of now, which remains almost flat from last year.

We have done a lot of activities to bring down the debt. From our underlying businesses, in this year, we expect dividend and capital through buyback and other stuff of almost 1,000-plus crore.

For this year, ₹1,000 crore-odd will come from dividend and buyback and other stuff from the underlying businesses. We expect between 1,000 to ₹1,500 crore from the EAAA IPO, and the stake sale of Nido and EML should give us another ₹750 crore.

Other things like we have a couple of offices that we are in the process of selling to investor, doing a sale and leaseback, and we have some investments in the underlying funds which will also come back. Through this stake sale and dividend, we expect almost 3, 3.5 thousand crore to be realized in the coming year.

When we look at the 6,400, against that we have 3, 3.5 thousand crore of liquidity, cash flow coming in. Out of the balance 3,000, our property investments and the offices we own, Edelweiss House and others, are about ₹2,000 crore, and ₹1,000 crore are the investment we have in the underlying company, in the underlying funds and all that we have.

We have ₹1,000 crore of investments, ₹2,000 crore of property, and between 3 to ₹3,500 crore of stake sale and dividend realizations that we expect in this coming year. I think on the corporate debt, though it looks flat, we remain comfortable to go by our earlier guidance that we will keep on reducing it and we will I think bring it down to below ₹3,000 crore in the next 1 year to 18 months, for sure.

That is our plan, and we continue to work towards it. Along with that, the other update is EAAA placement, as you may have seen.

We have got the SEBI approval for the IPO. Now, as soon as market stabilize and we have a little bit of bandwidth, we will work towards the IPO.

We did do a 4.4% placement of the EAAA to a group of high-net-worth investors, but more importantly, people who've been investors in our funds. They were key LPs and select individual investors who have been long-term supporters of fund.

They are fairly large investors in the fund, and we wanted to create alignment of interest with them. We are very grateful that the 4.4% placement happened.

We got ₹375 crore out of that. The other important milestone we achieved was we got our transportation-focused InvIT, I think listed.

It started trading yesterday. It had a very successful IPO and a successful listing.

Cetus has a portfolio value of almost ₹11,000 crore, and it's our first transportation-focused InvIT, we are very excited about it. The update on strategic investment by Carlyle in Nido, we have got the CCI approval.

We're still awaiting RBI approval, but everything is on track. We've been replying to the queries, and we hope that the process continues smoothly.

Fourth important update has been the Edelweiss ARC, the MD and CEO appointment has been finalized. We have appointed Mr.

Arun Mehta, who was earlier MD and CEO of SBI Capital Markets. He's going to join us in the next 3, 4 weeks.

We got approval from RBI for his appointment, and now we're just finalizing the paperwork. We are very excited for the next innings of Edelweiss ARC, for the growth again to start.

We're seeing that ARC business opportunities are growing again, and with Arun Mehta coming on board, we are pretty excited by that. I think along with that, our both the asset management businesses continue to clip along well.

Both the insurance businesses have also shown good growth and should get to breakeven in this year. Our credit businesses have started growing again in a calibrated manner.

ARC's recoveries have been strong, and we expect them to grow. As I said, corporate debt, we feel is under control.

The plans we have, we are very confident that those plans will allow us to get to the reduction of corporate debt as fast as possible. With that, I wanted to leave a lot of time for the Q&A, and I just want to sum up by saying our consolidated profit has grown.

There was some misunderstanding because of the reporting, but the investor presentation clears it out pretty well. The operating businesses PAT was muted because of the exceptional items and the market volatility in the last quarter.

Overall, we expect that our businesses will continue the healthy growth because that has gone on for last 3, 4 years in spite of all the volatility and the uncertainty, and the businesses have only got stronger. All the other strategic projects, as I've given update, are on track.

We truly want to thank all our stakeholders, all our bankers, all our shareholders for the support and the feedback they've given us over the years. Thank you with that, and we'll now open up for question and answers.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity.

I had a few questions. Sir, firstly, as you mentioned about the EAAA placement, I wanted to understand more about the same, particularly the profile of the investors who participated in that.

Sorry, can you repeat the question, please?

Yeah. You mentioned about the EAAA placement, right?

I wanted to understand more about that, particularly the profile of the investors who participated in that.

Yeah. All the investors are actually investors and the limited partners in our funds who have invested with us over the years, and they've supported us.

They are HNI investors, family offices who have all been there. We wanted to do only a 4% placement because it was a long-standing ask from them, a lot of investors.

As we have an AUM of more than ₹64,000 crore, out of which almost 30,000 is from Indian investors, and a lot of that is from Indian high-net-worth, a lot of that is from Indian HNI family offices. We had kept a cap of about ₹40 crore per head.

We had a lot of people who wanted to invest even more than that, but we said only ₹40 crore. We had a group of investors, all of them were our LPs.

Our requirement was that they are already investors with us, and we had, I think, about 40, 45 investors in total.

Understood. Secondly, I wanted to ask regarding the IPO.

The DRHP was approved last week, right? Could you walk us through the next steps and also when the IPO is expected, the timeline of the IPO?

Additionally, I wanted to ask if you are considering any other further placement rounds and what could be the shareholding structure post the IPO?

We have not finalized anything. We don't intend to do anything besides the IPO now.

We think obviously, as the markets are still in a state of uncertainty because of the Gulf situation. We will wait for a couple of months for things to stabilize, and then our idea will be to launch.

We are in no hurry because I think we have enough business momentum going on. If you ask me, I think in the next 3, 4 months, I expect the global situation to stabilize and for us to be able to do the EAAA IPO.

Maybe July, August.

Got it. I have one last question.

You also mentioned about the Nido-Carlyle transaction, right? Could you share the expected timeline for closing that transaction, and also if there are any positive shifts that we foresee, such as the cost of funds or the credit rating trajectory or even the acceleration in the disbursement growth?

Nido is

growing steadily. We are not putting a lot of high-growth pressure on that because we want to close the Carlyle transaction.

We're also investing in opening some offices and increasing our footprint on affordable housing. On that basis, I think it's on a steady footing.

The Carlyle transaction, we expect the only thing awaiting is RBI approval, which is we filed this in February, and usually RBI approvals have taken 3 to 4 months normally is what the lawyers inform us. If we filed this in February, we are now March, April.

I think somewhere between May, June, I think we should get the approval. All the other approvals are in place.

Thank you. That was very helpful.

That's it from my side.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?

audible. Hi, Siddhesh.

Zuno has been a pioneer in Insurtech with products like usage-based insurance and telematics. With the rapid evolution of AI, how do we see the opportunity for further product innovation and differentiation, sir?

I think it's a very important question because, as in Zuno, we have been focusing more on auto insurance. Our aspiration is to be one of the best auto insurance companies in India.

It will take time, but the reason we are very bullish on auto insurance, motor insurance, is because we think it is very data-based. It is very data-linked.

With cars also having a lot of data on driver, on fuel consumption, on even the cost of repair and all, a lot of that is now getting standardized. Garages have become very professional.

I think India is where the US car insurance market was about 40, 50 years ago. On that basis, with the kind of data and AI available, this business has a lot of possibilities for innovation.

You can do a lot of innovation in pricing, really allow customers to pay for what real risk they want. You can slice risk.

You can also quote pricing which is customers-to-customer, pincode-to-pincode, car make to car make, all of that. Even on the claims settlement, you'll be able to do claims settlement within 3 hours and all that.

We have already been experimenting with that because with a lot of AI, you can look through cameras and all, you can look at the damage done, you can assess the cost very quickly. There is a lot of improvement on all three.

There are three parts of the auto insurance business. One is the pricing and the policy, the second is the customer experience, and third is the claims management.

All three of them have a huge amount of AI application that is there. We have large teams doing agentic AIs and all that because a lot of your call center and customer support and all can also use AI in a fairly big way.

Though we are very proud about our product innovation at Zuno, and as you would have seen, since inception, Zuno has been growing at between 25% to 40% every year. The motor insurance market has not been an easy one, as I'm sure a lot of you would have seen.

Health has been growing much more easily, motor has been a difficult market, but in that difficult market, we have innovated a lot. We're also very proud of our customer service and claim settlement.

In that also, AI is going to be a big help. We are investing fairly big in that.

Data was always very important to us. Now how that data will be used, I think AI will make it easier and easier.

Understood, sir. On the SIF side, Edelweiss SIF has crossed 3,000-plus crore in AUM, making it one of the largest in the industry.

How do we view the long-term opportunity in this space, and are there any plans to expand the product suite further?

I think SIF is a new asset class. Everybody thinks it's another mutual fund or another AIF or another PMS.

It's actually has some elements of a mutual fund, some elements of an AIF, and some elements of the PMS category. If you go back and study the underlying needs, because a PMS serves a very different need than an AIF does, and that serves a very different need than the mutual fund does.

Because as a lot of people ask that why do PMS exist when there is an income tax advantage, capital gains advantage with a mutual fund. Because they're serving different kind of needs.

In the same way, an SIF is also serving a very different need at the customer level, which is some parts of it are available in AIF, some parts are available in PMS, and some parts are available in a mutual fund. It's a very hybrid product.

You really have to understand customer needs, create the product as per that, and more importantly, market it very carefully as per that. Because even if it's a product which is marketed as another AIF or another PMS, or what some people call it a poor man's AIF, it's not true.

I think it is a very different, very, very nuanced product that is there. We are pretty bullish on that.

There are some specific customer needs that an SIF will cater to, and your ability to create products in that is important. We have already launched the first product, which has, as you said, done very well.

We are the leaders in that. We are currently looking at couple of other products also.

We should launch our second product in the next few weeks. We do a lot of research to understand customer need, and then create the product and communicate with the distributors ke, ye product is for this kind of customer, for this kind of need.

That is important. Just using a distribution to sell a product in a very average manner will not really allow you to capitalize on this new asset class and new product very very effectively.

Understood, sir. Thank you very much.

That's all from my side.

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, I have multiple questions. Firstly, on the alternate piece if I look at, your fee-paying AUM on the retail assets have surpassed the private credit fee-paying AUM.

What actually are we doing on that piece? What differentiates us from the competition, and what are our plans to expand that kind of business?

Secondly, coming to your mutual fund business, the growth on the profitability seems to be material. How should we think about the PAT level yields for the medium term?

Similarly, on the mutual fund business, we have seen strong growth on the SIP book. If you can give us some color around this SIP book, how this book has behaved during the last quarter and what kind of sense we are getting for the month of April.

Where are we seeing the SIPs, new SIP folios being generated? Is this on the passive side or is this on the commodity funds?

Last question is on your insurance business. Are we going to seek a forbearance from the IRDAI for applicability of the Ind AS for FY '27?

Yeah.

Okay. [laughter] I hope I remember all the questions you have asked and answer them.

I'll try and do it in reverse order. In insurance Ind AS, yes, we have asked for the forbearance because I think most of the industry players are going to ask, because the clarity is still emerging, there's a lot of investment to be made, and you still have to run I-GAAP.

If you don't ask for forbearance, then for this year, you'll end up running Ind AS and I-GAAP both, and you might end up spending a lot of money and effort on that. I think the idea currently is to take forbearance for a year, both the insurance businesses will implement Ind AS from the next year.

Though it is actually very useful from a profitability point of view, from a profit after tax reported point of view, Ind AS is a lot better for us than I-GAAP. In order to avoid complexity, we have taken the forbearance.

That's your first question. Second, SIP book, we are now more than ₹600 crore in SIP in the mutual fund.

A lot of this is in equity and commodities, largely equity, and a little bit in international funds. Our main focus has been equity AUM, and we are getting a fair amount of inflows into that through SIP.

On the mutual fund growth, as you can see, now we are at a PAT yield level of about 6 paise, which is still low and we have some headroom to grow. As our product mix is undergoing a change, as our equity component is going up, as our new money is coming at slightly better economics and all that, when we add up all of that, our aspiration is that from current 6, we should go to 10 basis point by 2030.

It's going to be a slow improvement. We want to be fair to our distributors, we want to be fair to our partners, and we want to improve our yield not by reducing theirs, but by calibrating the product portfolio, by introducing high economics product, by having higher economics on incremental flows that we get.

We think we will continue to grow on the AUM the way we've been growing at about 20% a year. On the PAT margin, which is about 6 basis point, we would like to go to 10 basis point in the next 3, 4 years.

We are in no hurry. We want to do it in a very careful, calibrated manner, in a win-win-win manner with our partners and distributors and creating products like SIF is actually one example that we are creating products which truly add value to the customer and hence improve our economics.

On EAAA, now the real asset has become higher than private credit, because private credit, we have not raised a big fund in the last 3, 4 years. Our expectation is they'll both be equal, though in private credit, the assets keep on going down because you keep on returning money to the customers, and average private credit fund average tenure is only 2.5 years, while in real asset, the average tenure is about 4 to 5 years.

Real asset is a slightly longer duration funds, while private credit, because we also keep on getting income and realizations, we keep on returning the money. We expect our average private credit fund to have an average in and out horizon of 3 years, while the real asset will have 5 years.

That would be the difference. Again, a lot of this is based on the new fund launches, and we launch a new fund every 2 years or so, 2 to 3 years in private credit.

As the new fund is getting launched in this year, we expect private credit FPAUM will also go up in this year.

Sir. Understood.

Thank you.

Hi, sir. Am I audible?

Yes.

Yeah. Sorry, sir, I joined the call late if my questions are just repeating.

I have two questions. One, see, sir, right now, given the volatility in the market, are you seeing any challenges on raising of funds from foreign investors in EAAA?

What are the FPAUM and fund raising targets for the next year, and could you also give some color on the pipeline of new fund launches? That would be my first question, sir.

I will take after second question afterwards.

We don't have a lot of challenges from global investors on the products we have which have a higher yield. The products will have a yield of more than 16% to 18% rupee yield.

There foreign investors are still very keen and all. Where the yields are about 13%, 14%, like in performing credit, foreign investors are slightly worried about the rupee effect.

They are actually very hot on India, but a lot of even the FPI selling we have seen in the market, a lot of that is now driven by the view on the rupee and not the view on underlying Indian opportunities in the market. We also have a lot of products.

We are looking at offering a hedge offering to our international clients, which will be in US dollar and we'll hedge the dollar to rupees to remove any uncertainty. I think there is opportunity on creating new products, because hedging and rupee stability has become a key need for a lot of foreign investors.

Where they are higher-yield products, like our special situations fund, which expects to make around 18%-plus, there I think investors are fairly okay, because at that yield, a rupee is not that big a problem. The biggest problem across the board for all foreign investors in India today is their view on the rupee, and they're looking for some stability on that.

Understood. Sir, secondly, our MSME disbursements have tripled in FY '26.

Could you just highlight what were the key drivers or initiatives that has contributed to such significant growth here? Also, with our wholesale scaling down now largely behind us, when can we see our earnings actually starting to reflect the real retail mix?

Could you just share some outlook there, and what would be our MSME AUM growth and the ROE trajectories for next 2 to 3 years, sir? That's it from my side.

I think on ECL Finance, as we have a lot of equity out there. We had decided that we will grow MSME only after wholesale book is scaled down after all the clean-up is over.

Around March '25 is where we concluded that the wholesale is behind us, the stress on the wholesale is behind us. We also hired a new Managing Director, Ajay Khurana, who came on April 1st, 2025.

We have almost grown our disbursements 3x in this year. We did about ₹1,000 crore of disbursement in this year.

We expect to keep on growing, and we'll be happy if we do between 1,000 ₹1,700 to ₹2,000 crore disbursements in the coming year. We are currently investing a lot also in that business, the NIMs will be there, but we are also opening a lot of branches and hiring people and all of that, and focusing a lot on MSME only.

We expect that the profitability and all is maybe 18 months to 2 years away, but the growth has started coming in. We always said growth before profitability.

If you look at our asset management business, our mutual fund also, until 2 years ago, profits were very low, but we had been growing for 5 years before that. Growth and then profitability, rather than try to get profitability and growth at the same time, which becomes much harder.

Currently, MSME will be in a growth mode for the next couple of years, and we do feel confident about the disbursement growth and the profitability will follow that.

Right, sir. Thank you.

Sir, just what would be the kind of ROE trajectories over the next 2 to 3 years for us?

In ECL Finance? ECL Finance.

In

ECL Finance,

we should aim in 2 years' time to get to a 10% ROE, because we are still very under-levered. We should get to 10% ROE once we get the scale-up done, which is about 18 months to 2 years from now.

We have quite a bit of equity there, our idea is to get there, and you will see improvement. It won't be overnight, but it will be gradual.

I think getting to a double-digit ROE is an important milestone for us.

Understood. That's very helpful.

Thank you so much.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?

Great. I just have two quick questions.

First one being, see, the cost-to-income in mutual fund, it has improved by approx 10% YoY in the current FY, and as we continue to scale, what is the steady-state efficiency level that we are targeting? How does one view the near-term growth potential in the equity AUM?

I'll ask the second question post this.

As I said earlier, our aspiration in the mutual fund equity AUM is to grow at 20%-plus. We've been growing faster than that, but our aspiration is to grow at 20%.

As 8%, 10% comes out of your MTM growth in a normal year, and the other comes from new money. We already have also very strong SIP book, ₹600-odd crore and all.

As we introduce a couple of new products, NFOs and all, that also helps you collect additional AUM. I think getting to 18%, 20% AUM growth in equity is a good target to have.

Cost-income ratio, we are in the 60s now. I think eventually, according to us, a good cost-income ratio for a mutual fund should be 45% to 50%.

Hopefully, I think we should also get there as the scale happens in the next 2, 3 years. We do expect that we would also want to list our mutual fund at some point of time.

When we list, we would hope that the cost-income ratio is near 50%, but it's continuing work. You have to constantly, I think, invest in efficiency and technology, and not allow your cost to grow as the income is growing.

Understood. This was helpful.

Thank you. The last question I have is, EAAA has recently launched Cetus transportation InvIT IPO, which has received overwhelming response.

The question that comes to the mind is, how does InvIT as a class of asset differ from other infra yield funds in terms of, say, risk or income generation and overall return profile, if you could just throw some light on that?

There are different kinds of InvITs are there. There are some InvITs which are mainly steady InvITs.

Some are declining InvITs where their assets are declining, because as every year goes by, when you have roads, the road concession, which is 20 years, become 19 years, becomes 18 years every year. There are also InvITs which are growth InvITs, where you are keep on going adding assets.

You keep on buying new assets so that you get your InvIT horizon keeps on expanding. We want our InvIT to be a growth InvIT.

We'll keep on adding assets as you go along. We understand this business very well.

The second is, we also have a very strong operating team, which actually can manage the asset and run the asset. We are not just financial investors, we also run the assets pretty well.

Most of the InvITs are road InvITs. Ours is a transportation InvIT.

Though the difference seems very nuanced, a transportation InvIT can do a lot of other things besides roads. We can do things like airports and ports and other transportation hubs.

We can do cable car, which is a big growth in India. All the tourist spots are going to have a lot of cable cars coming in.

A lot of the transportation is going to be via cable car, because that is easy to do and it doesn't require a lot of infrastructure. In a lot of smaller cities, that will also be the game.

When you have a transportation InvIT, your options on what assets which are there in transportation are a lot more than in the road InvIT. Road is a big part of transportation, but transportation has a little bit more optionality on much higher yielding assets also.

Right. That's very helpful.

Thank you. Good luck.

Hi, sir. Am I audible?

Sir, just a couple of questions. Given the bearish market environment in March, how did it impact performance across our business segments?

With PBT largely flat for the year, what is your assessment of the overall financial impact?

Very hard to put an impact, but I think a lot of our mutual fund also has a lot of sponsor investments, right? They have almost ₹100-odd crore, which are compulsory sponsor investments.

We also have a lot of treasury activity on arbitrage and other things. I would say overall March would have impacted about maybe ₹40, ₹50 crore on a consolidated basis.

Hard to estimate because there are many factors, different businesses. Across all the businesses, because there are equity investments in a quite a few businesses also.

Across all the businesses, maybe a ₹40, ₹50 crore impact would have come. It's normal.

I think these things happen. In India, we have to learn to live with all this.

Understood. Another question, sir.

How does the private credit opportunity in India differ from the global markets? Which key asset class within private credit do you see as the most attractive in terms of growth perspective going forward?

Actually, there are three categories in private credit. One is special situations, one is performing credit, other is called investment-grade credit, IG credit.

They all are good. They cater to different investor needs.

IG credit usually is about 12% to 14% or 12% to 14%, 15%, performing credit is 14% to 18%, special sits is 18%-plus. They all have different nuances, they have different capabilities, and they cater to a different kind of investor needs.

All of them are good. We obviously have been very strong in the special situations category.

Almost if you look at our FPAUM, out of the private credit, approximately ₹20,000 crore we have, almost 65% is in special situations. Also, it differs from international because international, a lot of private credit funds are slightly open-ended.

They are called semi-liquid, that every quarter you can go and redeem your holdings. Actually, of late, that is where you're seeing some of the problems are happening.

In India, there are no liquid credit funds. All AIFs in credit are closed-ended.

The fund has a lot of holding power. There is no redemption pressure that can come.

One of the biggest difference between private credit globally and India is that India, all funds are closed-ended. There is holding power, you don't have to try to liquidate something in distress.

I think globally, a lot of private credit funds have gone into open-ended or things which are liquidable. On top of that, the international private credit market has also been very competitive and very high growth, a lot of people have gone down the risk curve.

That is not happening in India, because in India, there is still a scarcity of capital. It's not easy to raise a private credit fund of scale.

Private credit funds which are more than 4 to ₹5,000 crore of AUM, you can count them on your fingers. There are a lot of ₹500, ₹1,000 crore funds, but to raise a big fund is not easy.

I don't think there is the intensity of competition which is creating asset quality issues globally are happening in India. On that count, India is pretty okay.

We're still a very small market, but we hope that it continues to grow, but in a steady manner, not a very fast growth.

Understood, sir. Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

Both of them relate to EAAA. I think we spoke a lot about operating leverage in the business.

This year, I think revenues were up about 22%, 23%, and costs were also up about 25%. Is that due to some of the exceptional items that we were referring to at the start of the call?

In EAAA, operating leverage will be more muted. We will operate at a 50% to 60% cost-income ratio, because there, it's a very people-driven business.

You need people, and we constantly invest in new businesses and products. This year, a little bit of uptick in cost have happened is because we expanded the team, the international sales team, the local sales team, as well as we are introducing couple of new products.

The investment in that has started. Partly, I think I would expect that to be a cost-income ratio of about 50% to 60% range will fluctuate in that from a quarter-to-quarter basis.

The mutual fund is the one where there is a lot more operating leverage, because it's a more retail business, while this is more institutional, more wholesale. You need sales people, you need investment team, all of that.

Understood. Just the second one was, I think we spoke about the ₹1,500 crore going towards debt reduction once the IPO happens.

We sold the 4.4% for ₹375 crore. Did we utilize that for debt reduction?

Because net debt seems to be flat year-on-year.

We did, but if you do the math, I think on about ₹6,000 crore of debt, we have an annual interest burden, every quarter is about 150 to ₹200 crore. There is an interest meter also on the other side.

The fact that for a investment holding company, the fact that we are flat itself means that at least whatever interest was there, that has come from stake sale. As earlier clarified, a lot of the activities we did last year, like Nido, like mutual fund, like EAAA IPO prep, like the dividend coming from underlying companies, a lot of the work has gone in the last year, FY '26, but the actual cash will come in FY '27.

I think on that basis, we expect that over and above the interest—say about 400, ₹500 crore will get added only because of interest, but this year we're expecting a 2.5 to ₹3,000 crore of cash flow realization, there'll be a significant fall in that.

Understood. Got it.

Thank you.

Hello, sir. Am I audible?

Sorry, sir, if the questions will be repetitive, as I joined in late, but I had couple of questions. The first question is on our insurance business.

Our combined losses in our insurance business declined by 23% over the last 2 years, and losses in life insurance has remained flat because of GST and other exceptional item. Also in Q4, we saw market volatility as compared to last year.

How confident are we about achieving breakeven over the next four quarters? That is my first question.

Second question is how do you see India's capital market position in the context of this global uncertainties that is there? These are my two questions.

I think on the first one, we are pretty confident that we'll get to breakeven. We are working very hard for that.

There were some exceptional items this year, like GST and labor code and all. We are doing a lot of things to get to breakeven, we remain reasonably confident of getting there.

I think, as you said, the global geopolitical event and the global uncertainty and the high oil price is going to affect India. We do think there is some pain for the next three to three to six months.

I think India is resilient enough, our reserves are there, plus our I think economy is in a pretty good place to be able to handle that. Just because you handle it doesn't mean it will not be painful.

It will be painful, but handleable.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Sagar, and thank you, Rashesh, for all the answers. Thank you, each one of you, for your time today.

It's been a joy to have you all and listen in to your insightful questions. Please do write in to us at Edelweiss Investor Relations for any other questions and feedback, or any additional information you may need.

Thank you, and have a great day ahead. Bye-bye.