Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.

I welcome you all to the Q1 and FY27 earnings conference call for CarTrade Tech Limited. To discuss the quarter's financial performance, we have from the management Mr.

Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director; Ms. Aneesha Bhandary, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer; and Mr.

Varun Sanghi, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking and may involve risk and uncertainties.

For more details, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other filings that can be found on the company's website and on the stock exchanges. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks, post then we can open the floor for Q&A.

Thank you and over to you, sir.

Thank you and welcome to all of you to the quarterly earnings call of CarTrade Tech, and good afternoon. I'm Vinay Sanghi, the Chairman and Managing Director of the company.

I first want to start by just running you through a presentation, and then we'll be happy to answer all your queries and doubts post that. If you look at the presentation circulated, and we jump straight to the slide on the four-year growth story, and if you look at the four-year growth story, it is for 16 consecutive quarters now, the company has delivered a 45%+ EBITDA growth.

It talks about the consistency in performance of the company quarter after quarter. As I said, 16 quarters is four years, and every quarter we deliver 45% EBITDA growth.

It shows also partly the quality of execution and unit economics model of the company that this growth could be delivered over such a long period of time. This growth of 45% on 16 consecutive quarters gives us to an very internal goal which we have in the company and something we've talked about earlier as well, of being a 40-40 company.

A 40-40 company is a company which consistently delivers 40% profit growth and has margins of more than 40%. We've got to get to the 40% margin yet, but that's part of the goal to complete very, very soon.

The 40% growth is consistently now happened for 16 consecutive quarters. Part of this gives us the confidence on the guidance we gave in an earnings call earlier of achieving a 1,000 crore profit over the next four to five years.

With this growth story, we feel pretty comfortable and confident of that guidance which was given earlier as well. If we look at the rest of the data on the slide, we are compounding at scale: 22% CAGR revenue for the last four years, EBITDA growth of 66%, PAT growth of 54% over the last four years, this CAGR; margin expansion from 9% to 31%, getting to best in class; capital strength, cash reserves continue to grow.

As the company has very little capital expenditure or operating investments to be made or working capital. Most of the moneys or most of the profits or almost all the profits generated go to our cash strength of the company.

ROCE is healthy still at 10%, as you know. If you look at the shareholder value creation, there's been almost a 7x increase in EPS, earnings per share, for shareholders over the last four years.

7x in the last four years has been the EPS growth. We feel very confident of the growth of the company and the position of the company.

If we go to the next slide, as you see here on the top, 80 million users and we're still growing. Our Q1 users or the users in Q1 '27 are higher than the users in Q4 '26.

I think it should give you great confidence on the brand of CarWale, BikeWale, and OLX continue to be 95% organic as well, and traffic continues to grow even at this level and this scale. There are a handful of companies in India which have shopping companies or commerce companies or classified or marketplaces which get more than 150 million users per year, unique users.

These are 150 million Indians every year. There are not probably 10, 15, maybe 20 such companies in India.

CarTrade Tech owns three of them: CarWale, OLX, and BikeWale. They're 95% organic on top.

Out of all the companies in India, three of them is owned by your company, which gets more than 150 million users per year. I think that's another massive landmark, as you can see.

We have a lot of physical presence: 500+ physical location with our abSure and Shriram Automall outlets, 1.5 million vehicle auctions conducted which shows scale, 230 crores of revenue. This is our highest ever total income in any quarter.

I want to say that as well. We've never achieved a 230 crore total income, this is our highest ever in any quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA is close to 100 crores. Profit after tax is 57 crores.

Our cash balance at 1,321 continues to grow. If you look at the consolidated results, like I said, the consolidated income is the highest ever.

EBITDA is up 45%. If you look at revenue from operations, it's almost equal to Q4.

I think this is very rare in a company like ours, which has got slightly cyclical in nature. Normally, Q1 is more muted than Q4, just the nature of the business.

Then, of course, Q2, Q3, Q4 is dramatically over Q1. In this case, Q1 and Q4 are almost the same, which is a 16% growth in revenue, 45% growth in EBITDA.

Margins are held here at 31%. It was 25% last year.

We've continued to manage our costs well. Total cost escalation is at 7%.

If you see the EBITDA at 45% in spite of increments during the year, as you know that in April every year increments cycle is in April and our wages have gone up because of the increment cycle during the increase in the increment cycle. You also know that once this cost has gone up in Q2, Q3, Q4, you're unlikely to see any cost escalation.

All the incremental revenue in Q2, Q3, Q4 goes straight to EBITDA or profits. I think that's also something you're aware of.

I think we've also had in this quarter an exceptional labor code impact cost of 3 crores, which is factored in the results, which is being shown here as well. If you look at the PBT before exceptional item is also our highest ever PBT at 77.59, and I think that's also something at 36% growth.

If you look at PAT's growth, 21%, and that's in spite of higher deferred tax provisions. As we have tax shelters, but due to the standard obviously, there's a higher tax provision.

Also, there's a higher tax incurred on OLX, which is now out of the tax-free bracket, and we pay taxes as usual in OLX. I think the biggest difference if you see in these results, there's almost a 7 to 8 crore tax impact.

There's a 3 crore labor code impact, which is almost 11 crores in this quarter itself. In spite of that, the company has grown at 45% EBITDA, 16% revenue growth.

If you look at the stand-alone results, the consumer group, CarWale, BikeWale, continue to grow at 18%. EBITDA is healthy at 33%.

All the employee incremental costs are factored here, and margins are healthy at 33%. This is in the stand-alone accounts, and therefore also carries the labor code exceptional item.

The PAT has continues to grow at 12% in spite of the labor code item. This is just stand-alone results.

As I said once again here, if you look at Q4, revenues were at 79.38. Q1 this year at 78, which almost is the same, which shows the strength in the business, that Q4 last year is equal to Q1 this year.

As I told you again, the Q2, Q3, Q4 is likely to be much higher than this. Obviously, this will surpass a lot of the milestones we achieved in the past in the next few quarters coming.

If you look at the Remarketing business, the growth is at 13%, profit growth is strong at 38%, margins up at 28%, and profit after tax has grown by 31%. If you look at OLX, it's probably the hero in the pack.

I think a lot of you have been looking for this growth. We're happy we delivered this 29% growth to you.

Obviously, the way our businesses are structured, that 29% growth has led to a 76% growth in EBITDA, right? The PAT is at 27% because the tax, as I've said earlier, OLX is now taxable as an entity.

Yeah, 76% growth in EBITDA, 29% growth in revenue. We think this is just the beginning.

Clearly, all indications are that Q2, Q3, Q4, a lot of these revenue numbers will all be surpassed. We're very confident of the future of OLX, and I know we've been talking about it for a long time.

I'm sure you all will be happy to see that you can finally see all of these numbers play out, right? It's kind of a hero in the pack.

As we mentioned earlier, and you may know, Varun, apart from being CSO, has also earlier this year taken over as Chairman of OLX as well. If we look at the next slide, which is some of the initiatives being taken by the company.

I think one of the biggest initiatives in the quarter, which has been done from a product, technology, and partnership standpoint, and we announced it earlier today, that we've gone into a very strategic partnership with Spinny. The idea there is transforming the entire buying and selling used car experience in India for all customers who are selling or buying used cars.

As OLX gets 20 million buyers and 3 million sellers a year on the platform. We are by far the dominant automotive platform in the country.

Our intent is here to launch a retail transaction buying-selling model in partnership to make sure these users get a completely seamless physical and online method to buy and sell a used car. The first such partnership is being announced with Spinny, where consumers will be able to digitally sell their car or buy their car in partnership with all the physical capabilities and operation capabilities of our partners.

Like I said, the first partnership is being announced with Spinny. This partnership over the next two, three, four years will develop into something really powerful.

There are a number of other partnerships planned with large dealership groups which are similar. We are in a conversation and with very, very large dealer groups in India, and we will have some more partnerships as well with them.

We also have 550 550-odd abSure signature outlets where these partnerships will become alive. We feel very confident about this whole used car physical, online business with all our digital capabilities and all the physical capabilities of all our partners in hand.

As this is going to be a never-before end-to-end journey for all our users. During the quarter, we also announced the launch of via AI, our AI product, which is adding a lot of value to these users on condition check, pricing check, matchmaking, etc., etc.

Via AI will also add tremendous significance to these partnerships and to this physical and digital business. I think the one thing for shareholders here is that, obviously, the consumer is going to get a fabulous experience.

The thing for shareholders is that we're moving more and more towards a large transaction margin in these businesses. We think this could be a very, very large business for us in the coming years.

You'll see a lot of this in the next quarter, few quarters coming. We're forging these partnerships and relationships with various physical players, partly our own abSure and signature stores, partly large dealer networks, and partly it's partners like Spinny.

You will see a lot more of this in the coming few quarters and years. If we look at the next slide, is the Elite Buyer.

Elite Buyer have crossed 100,000 now in a single month and continue to grow rapidly. It's the first phase of Elite Buyer product which has got launched.

As we get millions and millions of buyers every month. Buyers on the platform are 7x the sellers.

OLX itself gets 30 million customers a month. The scale of buyers is extremely high.

We believe this will scale tremendously over the next few quarters. It's a significant opportunity for us.

It's a significant opportunity to provide excellent customer service to our buyers as well. The first phase of the product got launched.

I think what's going on now is all the AI elements around it: matchmaking, condition, pricing agents are all partly live, have been going live in the next few days, and some of them are already live. This is going to be a tremendous monetization lever for us in the future.

You'll start seeing it in Q2, Q3, Q4, and the next years and many, many years for that. We also believe that we've indicated earlier this could be our largest revenue stream in the company.

We do believe that one of the things being launched in the next few weeks is that all business buyers on the platform will now have to move from free to paid with this product getting launched. That's a significant opportunity for us, and a lot of you will see this play out as time goes on.

As you see, OLX has got a 29% growth. Therefore, we feel confident about it growing to even higher levels just because of products like Elite Buyer.

Elite Buyer is one of the many initiatives. There's an Elite Seller initiative.

There's a verification initiative. The multiple other seller interventions that are taking place, multiple partnership interventions taking place.

This is just one example of a significant thing done and continuing to be done. If you see the next slide, it talks about how AI is going to retire the new car buying experience.

Many of you have been questioning and asking is how will AI impact your business and how will you help and differentiate yourself. As you can see here, this has already gone live now.

AI-assisted buying for new cars has already gone live. What you can do on today CarWale, you cannot do on other platforms, including horizontal platforms.

The ability to judge price, the ability to have an immersive experience, the ability to have an immersive showroom experience online and at the showroom is a very, very unique value proposition. As I've told you, this traffic continues to grow in spite of all the apprehensions which everybody's had on AI.

This traffic continues to grow. I think that's the massive positive thing for us.

For us, it's about continuously investing in this digital experience. Also, the amount of data CarWale and BikeWale sit with differentiated data, it helps us deliver products like this.

As I said again, very confident about this product. It's gone live as already.

We've had great, great reviews around it. We obviously think this will help new car buyers and new bike buyers have an experience they've never had before.

This is what I had. I'm happy now to clarify all your doubts and questions around the results or all the strategic initiatives which we're doing.

We had also had a meeting, a broad meeting, an analyst meeting on about three, four weeks ago, where we talked about our future strategy. Any such question, I'm happy to take at this point.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Hi, Swapnil.

Hi, Vinay. I have three questions.

The first one is on OLX. Your growth 29% YoY is good.

I was looking at your last year 1Q if I can get the growth also, the 29% growth has come on a favorable base. Can you give some color as to is that the right way to look at it or I'm missing something over there?

That's one part of the question. The other part of the question is like you mentioned about the buyer monetization that you're able to do on the OLX and you have 100,000 1 lakh people paying you.

What was the number in the previous quarter, let's say 4Q FY26?

Sure. Thanks, Swapnil.

Thanks for the question. I think the first part is that the growth of 29% has got us to our highest ever revenues.

I think it's not about a base. It's just about getting to the highest ever numbers.

Normally, Q1 is the most muted, you have to compare Q1 to Q1. I think out here in OLX, these numbers are even much higher than Q4 last year.

I think the way to think about the numbers are that the growth is real and also the way to think about it, that is if Q1 is like this, what might be Q2, Q3, Q4? Obviously, numbers will go on top of this.

I think that's the other way to look at it. Therefore, you see this 29% growth and the 76% increase in EBITDA numbers.

That's the first part. The second part is, Elite Buyer is a new program.

These 100,000 numbers are getting passed. Every month we do a number that it gets surpassed the next month significantly.

There are a number of products. While I don't want to talk about these growth numbers over the last one, two, three months, I think what's more important is we see dramatic growth in Elite Buyers over the next few months.

I think that's partly about making it available to all our users, more and more users getting used to it, more and more users buying it. It's also introducing a lot of new features which gives us a full developed product which more and more people want.

As I said, whether it's 100,000 in a month today, I think in a few months' time, we'll all be clear to say, "Listen, 100,000 is a very small part of where we want to go." I think that's the way to think about it.

Got it, Vinay. The second question is with respect to the partnership that you have announced on Spinny.

Now I understand your incentive to get this partnership going and creating this kind of a platform wherein the buyers and sellers can transact directly on your platform, right? Thinking from your partner's perspective, what are they getting incrementally, right, through this partnership, which they were not getting earlier?

Because I believe for someone like Spinny, they already have a direct channel, right? They have their own setup and consumers coming to their platform

and

working with them. You also mentioned there are some other partners will be working with you.

Just I'm trying to triangulate, what does OLX or working with CarTrade give to these other partners which they were not getting earlier?

Sure. I think what we've announced is a complete win-win.

Like I said, almost 63% of people selling a car in India come to OLX. Almost everybody buying a used car coming to India come to CarWale or OLX, right, whether you any kind of used car.

I think what the strength of CarWale and OLX are the brand and the number of consumers we get. I think what Spinny's strength in this partnership is the physical capability and the operational capability, right?

They have their own set of users, but really the capability is what we want to leverage, right? What we also have on OLX and CarWale is tremendous digital technology.

This is aimed at giving you as a seller or buyer a very different experience on OLX or CarWale. How is the digital journey stitching the physical journey, right, is the intent here.

We think that collectively, we can build a product which nobody has ever experienced before, right, when you buy a used car. One of the goals here, and we've talked about this earlier, in our partnerships with all our partners, whether it's a large dealer group, whether it's our own abSure stores, is so that someone like you can sit on a desk and order a car which is delivered to you, right?

This is that journey or that digital journey we talk about where we want to partner with physical companies so that this entire enablement of transaction can happen online, number one. You'll see a lot of this in the next few quarters.

We've actually built a foundation of it with our own 550 stores and also the foundation with partners like Spinny and others which you'll hear about. I think this is that journey which we talked about to build a completely one-touch, one-click digital used car buying experience like never done before in India, right, over the next few quarters and few years.

It's a direction which is a very strong direction for the company. You'll see the strength of this.

Along that, then comes loans, then comes multiple other things along with that, right? Our intent is, like I said, building a real power product where consumers can freely buy a large, large selection of vehicles from different, different supply sources, including our own, and have this complete digital experience sell or buy a car.

The other thing which it does is in these partnerships, it obviously takes us into the transaction completely because it's entirely digitally done online on our platform and obviously gets us into the transaction margin cycle of the business, right, from listing fees and digital fees to transaction fees.

Got it. Just the last one on the consumer business.

You did highlight that the traffic trends in the business have been improving. Any color if you can share with us on the MAUs, what were the numbers on a YoY basis or a QoQ basis?

I think that break-up is not...

The YoY for the traffic, I think the consumer group is up 7 is up 7%. Aneesha, is that correct?

Yes, Vinay.

Correct. It's up in 7%.

It's also up consecutively quarter by quarter, QoQ as well. It's not only up YoY, it's up QoQ as well.

It's up across the board.

Got it. Thanks, Vinay, for the opportunity

and

all the best.

Thank you, Swapnil.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Vinay, on your previous answer where you said that it gets us into the transaction margin cycle of the business from listing fees to transaction fees. Here the model would be for every car which is actually sold, we receive some commission, or there would be an upfront listing fee that Spinny would pay to OLX?

How it would be?

No. You should not think about one relationship with Spinny.

You should not think about this just specific to Spinny. You should think about it specific to all the partners and dealers which we have and all our abSure stores.

This is not migrating, but most of our moneys today are collected from consumers who list or dealers who list. What would happen here is that it would tend to a transaction fee on margin share with all the partners we have.

Understood. No, this is very clear.

Second, this is for Aneesha. This time in other expenses, both in our stand-alone classified business and OLX, we've seen quite a sharp jump.

Is there any one-off or is this a new run rate? How should we think about it?

Aneesha, just a quick thing. There's a slight increase.

The numbers are very small in relation to our total cost, number one. Number two, some of it is, at least in CarWale, in consumer group, there's been a little bit about we moved offices.

There's for a very short period double rent, so that will go. Some of it is just tech tooling which we've been obviously working on because of this whole AI work.

Across the group, we've been working on a bit of tech tooling. As I said, the costs are very insignificant in rupee terms because on a very low base it shows an increase, but the actual rupees is very small.

Aneesha, you want to go ahead and further clarify? No,

actually you've already clarified. The total other expenses have gone up only by 3%.

Like Vinay clarified, in the consumer group, we have moved offices. That is the primary reason, and the second is tech investments.

No,

perfect.

I think for a few months, you have double office cost, I think that's what's happened because when you take an office, you can't leave the office till you get the other office, I think that is the reason.

Absolutely. No, this is very clear.

Thanks for this. Because the only reason to ask was in OLX, we live with this 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% in, of course, in this range kind of incremental margins.

There's no change to that idea. That's the only thing I wanted to clarify.

This helps. Thank you.

I'll further clarify that anyway now we think a lot of the increments are also factored in the first quarter. Now almost all increase in revenue, we see no incremental cost really in the next few quarters.

Very very clear. Thanks, guys, and all the best.

Thanks, Deep.

Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, two, three questions from my side.

One, like you mentioned on the Elite Buyer side. That program already crossed around 1 lakh buyer with straight plan to make all business buyer paid.

What is the expected ARPU that we are getting from there and timeline from the shift? Could pricing push buyers to competing platform?

Another on the three AI agent that we are working: matchmaking, pricing, condition assessment. What's the incremental cost of running this at scale?

How success being measured? Conversion lift and take rate, retention, like you very well mentioned on the cost side.

If you can explain further. Thank you.

Thank you, Jyoti. Thank you very much.

It's a good question. I think two things.

One is on the Elite Buyer front, we actually see ARPUs varying now and maybe even increasing because as you get business buyers in, what happens, they're growing in volume. Till now, the big change is that we will make it mandatory for business buyers who buy a certain number of products on the platform to be paid.

I think that's the big shift to the Elite Buyer numbers which will take place. That has not gone live yet.

That will go live in a few weeks. The numbers you see are without that going live, number one.

Number two, the agents, matchmaking, pricing, and condition, as you see, are aimed at people like you and me who, if you're buying a used product, you want to understand, suppose there's somebody selling it at a particular price, let's say, I don't know, 1 lakh rupees, you want to understand what price you should pay. Obviously, the amount of data we carry, our agents are able to understand to help you negotiate so you can buy the used product of your choice, whether that's a car or another item.

I think the condition agent, by just imaging and agentic reading of images, you are able to tell condition of products like cars, etc., before you buy, which is a very big fact when you want to buy something. Matchmaking gives you more customers.

That's how these agents function. I think your question is, when you start using these agents on Elite Buyer, which partly is being used, will your cost go up?

I think there are two things here. One is that all these are paid users.

Even if the cost goes up, there'll be incrementally tremendous increase in revenue, number one, first. Number two, when you look at building agents, and this is where the core technology of AI comes in, is how do you use agent without consuming tokens?

I think that's the first question. You have to remember, and we've been talking about this for the last 6 months to 9 months, that all the data we have is our own.

We're not using third-party data for these products, right? I think a lot of people have asked that why will we succeed or how will you work with LLMs in OLX or other places, and we've been saying again and again, our biggest strength is that all the data of condition or price or matchmaking we use is our own data.

We're not using a third-party LLM data to compute, right? When you use your own data, you can train your agents on your own data.

There is a one-time cost sometimes, which is very insignificant. When you regenerate compute every time and you produce results, because you're training the agent on your own data, we've moved towards an inference phase where the compute is very, very low.

The incremental cost is almost insignificant after all the training is done. I think that's something we've been trying to explain for the last few months to the audience here.

The big difference between OLX, CarWale, and many other platforms and other is all the data we use to compute and run these agents is our own. We don't use third-party data for this.

I think I just want to clarify that. The incremental cost is very, very insignificant.

Thank you, sir. Another question on the AI side, like we are doing via AI and then another we've done the partnership with Spinny.

Might be Spinny also doing using some own AI tools. Any synergy we are seeing there?

No, I think Spinny's role in this partnership is mostly around their operational capabilities and the physical capabilities that they have. A lot of the online AI tools, matchmaking agents, etc., etc., are all via AI, which is our brand, as you know.

via AI has been created across all platforms of ours so that when you as a consumer come to buy a used car, sell a used car, or by the way, not only a car, it could be a bike, it could be any other used product, whether it is pricing, whether it is matchmaking, whether it is condition, whether it is new car detailing, new car pricing, bike pricing, it goes across all our platforms on our own data. It gives a one-stop shop for you if you're shopping for a car or a bike.

It could be new or used. Anything you want to know, whether it's something simple like the legroom in a car to the price what you should pay on a new car to understanding that you want to sell your car and get a customer for it to pricing a used car to condition of a car or a bike, for that matter, it covers even every aspect.

Via is launched as a short language model, as they call, or small language model on our own data, which helps you get a complete experience. Therefore, these users on OLX get this experience.

Spinny or the other dealers or all the other abSure and other outlets we tie up with will provide the physical experience, but the digital experience and interface is ours.

Thank you, sir. Sir, just one more question.

Sorry if I missed it. Every segment EBITDA margin has compressed in this quarter.

This is largely we are facing due to the wage hike or any other reason also involved in it?

Actually, margins in every business has gone up over last year, so that's not correct. If you console margins gone to 31% from 25% last year, and in every company our margins have gone up over last year, so that's not correct.

I think what you see the margins are are are a little lower than the previous quarter. That's a phenomenon of the first quarter of this year, where our wage increases have taken place and increments have taken place.

The right way to compare the margins of the company, and as you can see in a console basis, it's 31%, it's gone from 25% last year. Actually 6 percentage points increase in margin have taken place in this quarter.

I think that is the way to look at it.

As as as and and

as you see because increments are done here, we obviously you will see now in Q2, Q3, Q4, this 31% margin in Q1 will get surpassed obviously in the few quarters coming quarters ahead. The margins normally peak by Q4.

Yeah.

Sure, thank you, sir.

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, first question, to sort of delve a bit more deeper on this partnership. If I look at the current app, I do see already Spinny, Cars24,

many of

these organized dealers have already sort of cars available on your platform. Most of them, I see are like a normal ads, not like the elite ads or something like that.

How do you sort of make them shift to this model? What is the benefit they are getting and what would be the reason for them to shift to a transaction-based partnership is something if you can help me understand.

Sure. All dealers are using OLX.

There are like thousands and thousands of dealers, including Spinny and Cars24 and others, using OLX to sell cars, number one. With Spinny specifically, what we've announced is that we will get a more integrated partnership.

What you're referring to is the earlier partnership or the earlier work we did with Spinny, which was like any other dealer, right? I think at this point, we're integrating if you're a seller.

How do you get an experience when you list your car or you want to sell your car integrated with the valuation purchase process, which will come live on-site, right, which is the intent of the partnership? The experience itself for you as a seller will be differentiated.

Number two, if you're buying a car which is an OLX plus CarWale plus Spinny or CarTrade car, your experience of the product will be very different, right? You'll have an online capability to buy it.

We just say buy now, and the car will be shipped, right? They're building multiple digital experiences, which is our role.

We're building all the customers are coming on our platforms, but we're building the physical capability and operational scale and capability of Spinny with us.

Understood. Generally, if I look at the elite...

Siddharth,

I just want to add here that even because we've announced Spinny today, I agree with that. This is being extended to large, large, very, very large dealer groups for all kinds of vehicles.

Also, it's being extended to obviously, eventually to all our abSure and signature dealers, which are about over 550 of them.

Got it. Second question is on the elite programs.

You do have shared about the sign-ups for the buyer program. Some numbers if you can share for the seller program or the verification program also will be quite helpful because I understand these are much more in terms of monetization opportunities which are there.

I think each are different. We obviously believe the Elite Buyer has got the maximum opportunity because the largest base of users are the buyers on the platform.

There's a 7:1 or 6:1 buyer-to-seller ratio. Even though we get 30 million people, there's obviously more buyers than sellers.

Elite Buyer has limitless potential for growth. Also, in the past, we've not monetized buyers, it's a completely virgin territory.

If you were to monetize a large part of our buyer base, which we feel very confident about doing in the coming quarters and years, you will find that it is, like I said, our largest revenue pool in the group, right, the Elite Buyer program. The Elite Seller program has caught on tremendously well, about, I think, 25%, 30% now of our seller revenue is already on the Elite Seller program.

I think if I remember 25% or so. We're finding that there's been tremendous traction of the product.

The product improvements are going on every day where there are a lot of AI being launched for the seller's tools. If you're selling a vehicle, or you're selling a phone, or you're selling a laptop or a furniture item, the way you list, the way you price, the kind of tools you get to understand price, list, or condition are all being adapted to the Elite Seller program.

A lot of the agents we talked about, matchmaking, condition, and price, on the Elite Buyer side are also going to come on the Elite Seller side. The two different trajectories, two different products, two different users, because sellers are sellers and buyers are buyers, which are going on parallely.

I think the way we talk about Elite Buyer is because it's a completely strong, long-term opportunity. Then verification is really for us trust and safety on the platform.

I think for any platform which has 180 million people a year buying and selling used products. We also, as have India's second largest chat platform, where we get 2.2 billion chats on OLX for transactions.

We obviously need to make sure there's high trust and safety. Verification is built to provide that trust and safety more than a monetization tool so that if you are buying a product from somebody else, you are able to do it in a manner which is adding to a lot of trust and safety in the process, even more than it has been so far.

There are lots of AI and other tools being built on verification itself and moderation itself, this experience becomes as good as it can be, right?

Understood, sir. Sir, last question on the consumer side.

We have seen probably a slight moderation in the growth momentum there compared to the last few quarters. Some sense on where do you see the sort of mix in terms of OEM and dealers?

How has been the growth?

There's no change, Siddharth. There's absolutely no change.

Actually, we we actually think it's been a reasonably strong quarter. Q1 is equal to Q4 in the automotive business.

Q1 is is normally, things from Q1 always get better to Q2, Q3, Q4, right? I think it's pretty much that's where it is: 18% growth.

Obviously, we see, this we've talked about it in the past as well. We obviously feel very robust and very we feel this growth is robust, and we feel obviously very optimistic about the new car business and new bike business.

Traffic, as I said, again, continues to grow. Therefore, we obviously find that, very confident about the next few quarters, around the new vehicle business as well.

Not much change in the mix of OEM, dealer. I think it's pretty much the same.

Aneesha, am I correct? I think...

Yes,

Vinay. Sure.

Thanks a lot. I'll come back in.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on a good set of numbers.

I had two questions. One was I'm seeing a sequential drop in the MAU.

I think it was 55 million in Q4 versus 47 million now. Is this just seasonal or is there something more that is there here?

I don't think that's correct. Aneesha, you want to correct that?

I think

the

sequential is higher. I think your numbers are wrong.

Sequential is higher. Sequential and year-on-year both are higher.

Q4, Q1, yeah, I think you're looking at the wrong number.

Sure. Just an extension of this...

Just to clarify, Q1 is higher than Q4 last year. Q1 is also higher than Q1 last year, both ways.

Last year quarter one, correct.

Q1 is higher on both counts. I think you've looked at the wrong number here.

I just saw 55 million, but sure.

No, I think you've got the wrong number.

Sure. Just an extension of this, how do you look at the TAM for the monthly active users internally from a three to five-year perspective for the consumer group?

We feel very optimistic. I'll tell you why, because two, three reasons.

One is, if you see the strategic presentation today around the slide we put and even our 30th June strategy presentation, when you look at a lot of the things we're going in the future to do, like I announced on the used car side, these partnerships are aimed to go to transaction and transaction revenue and give a better digital buying experience for used car customers. I think on the new car side, we're doing exactly the same, right?

Think of a product here on CarWale where, if you are buying a car, you come in CarWale, you find your dealer, you find your price, you find everything else. Then you're doing a test drive.

CarWale through that entire test drive process handholds you through that process. If you look at the experience, the immersive experience we're providing to you, you'll be shocked at how good that is when you do a test drive.

Or just think of the product where you got a price quote from a new car dealer and you don't know whether that price is right or wrong. All you need to do today is take a photograph of that price and put it on CarWale, and we'll tell you whether that price is right or wrong and what you should pay.

There are multiple other interventions of test drive, financing, etc., etc. I think what we're really saying is from the time you look to buy a car, which is finding out which car to buy, etc., etc., to the time you actually buy the car, that entire experience is what we've launched, right, and piece by piece of it, right?

We obviously feel not only are we playing and helping you decide many things, but we're also now playing a massive role in helping you complete the journey of buying a car. Obviously, the TAM dramatically goes up over the next three to five years.

This is with traffic growing too simultaneously. It's a combination of all of that.

We obviously with this new products which we're launching, are feeling very optimistic the next three to five years. By the way, there's also a thought in the future, and these are things which we're debating at our labs at this point of time, around products like membership, car membership to car servicing.

Because of the scale of these users and car owners, and bike owners, by the way, we can think of products like this. These are obviously new initiatives at a very early drawing board at this point of time.

That also talks about the TAM going forward. Then there's financing, which is probably something already launched and out there, which will also increase the TAM of what we're talking about for these customers.

It is financing, it is servicing tomorrow, it is membership, it is, of course, going closer to transaction, it is insurance. It is all these things, right, which change the TAM of this business completely.

Sure. The second question is around the Remarketing business.

If you can just break down the 13% YoY growth into retail and repo, and if you can also share the outlook on repo for the year?

Very strong on both. I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's 45, 41.

45 is retail, 41 is repo. Both have grown during the quarter, and clearly we feel very optimistic about the next few quarters for retail and repo both, actually.

It doesn't seem like any of that is slowing down. I think the good part of that business again here is an incremental normally Q Q1 is the most, everything in in the in the auction business, if you've seen the last few years, gets better in Q2, Q3, Q4, right?

Q1 is probably the most muted. You'll see some of that all happening in the next few quarters coming ahead.

Sure, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

First question...

Hi, Garima.

Hi, Vinay. First question is on OLX.

How many business buyers do you have in OLX? When you say all business buyers will become paid, how much per buyer do you hope to earn, and do you think this may cause some amount of buyer attrition?

It's a very good question. First, we classify business buyers by the amount they buy on the platform, right?

If you buy one, I don't know, phone, or one car, or one bike, you're a consumer as far as we're concerned. If you buy more than one, or more than two, or more than 10, we know you're a business buyer, right, or we classify you as a business buyer.

Obviously, the first level of intervention now in the next few weeks is really to look at the extreme business buyer, which buy large quantities, and make it paid for them, like number one. We believe there are in hundreds of thousands of buyers who put in more than 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 conversations or buy requests with sellers, and they're all business buyers.

They're in hundreds of thousands. They're not in tens or fives.

They're in very, very large quantity. Our first role is to take the most extreme cases and convert them to say, "Listen, you're a buyer buying so many products a month, you have to pay," right?

You'll get these features with that. That's the first attempt.

Then go down the funnel to the last one, right, over the next few months. It's a massive opportunity.

Obviously, from a monetization perspective, it's a massive opportunity. The attrition is a very, very good question, and that's why we've been very careful, and that's why I explained to you the funnel management, which is take the most extreme cases and then go to the most marginal cases.

The reason is because there is no other way for them to buy. OLX has, as if you want to buy a used product, there's just no other platform in the country.

I think they'll have to take a call whether to pay a very minimal cost and avail of all these facilities which Elite Buyer provides to them or not. We know that the relevance of OLX to their lives, many business buyers or entrepreneurs like this have been created by OLX over the years, and therefore we feel very confident that they'll take full value of the Elite Buyer program and the business buyers will come and pay.

I think that's what we believe. We think a very large percentage would convert to paid.

Understood. Is it safe to assume that different buyers will have to pay a different fee, and that's...

Sorry, you're asking the question again? Sorry, different buyers will have to pay for?

Different

buyers will have to pay a different fee, and that's...

No, it'll be a standardized fee. It'll be standardized.

...in proportion to how many transactions they do?

No, it'll be standardized. The fees are always standardized in OLX.

It's online generation of fees. The fees would depend on your activity on the platform.

It's very much like other platforms, right? Depending how much you want to use the platform, you'll pay on that basis, right?

The fees are based on usage and not by buyer.

Got it. It is going to be some per-transaction kind of a number, that's how we should understand it?

It may not be transaction, it just may be by usage. OLX has got multiple methods of usage, right?

You chat, you browse, you call, you also buy, you do multiple activities. All these activities is what we call usage.

Okay. Are there any steps underway to make the platform more transactional?

As in, currently your GMV would be more of an estimate, given most of the transactions actually conclude outside the platform. Right?

Is there any thought, any work...

All investments in tech, the Elite Buyer program, the Elite Seller program, all, every single initiative, if you see the Spinny partnership, the dealer partnerships tomorrow, whether it's cars, whether it's two-wheelers, whether it's electronics, are going towards transaction, all, every single. The future of Elite Buyer, when we talked about this in the last call, 6 months from now, 3 months from now, maybe even one quarter from now, will become transactional, right?

You'll be able to buy now, sell now, verification, all these products are aimed at building trust: escrow, logistics. All these are the future product plan which we've disclosed already.

The intent is, yes, absolutely like you said, that, listen, if I'm an Elite Buyer today buying somebody's phone, how can you press buy now and it comes to you? Is there logistics?

Is there shipping? Are there payments?

All of the things are being under creation, under building at this point. If it's a car, how do you online sit and say, "I want to buy a car," and the car reaches you into us?

Therefore, these partnerships are forged. Everything we're doing in OLX is actually saying, listen, from discovery and chatting and calling and negotiating and buying, how can agents help you decide first with this pricing and condition and matchmaking?

Then how can you actually do it through logistics and escrow and payments and all of the things? Partnerships.

That is the OLX ecosystem, which is why we feel so confident and good about the business itself. I think the good part is without even entering the actual buy at this point, the growth levels have started kicking in already in the company.

If you look at the company from one, two, three, four years ahead, or even a few quarters ahead, you'll see a very different experience for Elite Buyers and Elite Sellers than you even see today which exists.

Got it. Last question is again on this partnership with Spinny.

How many...

I just want to add one thing here, Garima. The eventual goal here is that if you're selling a, I don't know, selling a phone, you just list it.

I'm sure everybody knows here OLX is absolutely hyperlocal, which means it is actually displayed in a 5-kilometer radius. The responses on some of these products, an average of 50, 60 responses on a phone, right?

Means 50, 60 buyers for every phone. Sometimes our attempt is that, listen, can you sell it in 10 minutes?

You have quick commerce for buying new products. Can you have quick commerce for selling an old product?

Or you want to buy a used phone, can you have quick commerce for that? I think these are the kind of things we talk about at OLX strategically.

These are the kind of things we talked about in our 30th June meeting last month on how and where we want to go with it. Sorry for interrupting.

I thought I'd just clarify further. You can ask your question around you had something on the Spinny thing, sorry.

Yes. No, thanks for that clarification.

How many incremental listings do your platforms get access to post this partnership with Spinny? Is it fair to assume that CarTrade will remain asset-light post this partnership as well?

The listings, I think a lot of Spinny's cars are listed, but, of course, the listings will dramatically increase because they'll be buying a lot more cars from OLX as well. What you said is absolutely correct.

CarTrade is not in the business of taking positions or owning inventory or owning physical infrastructure. The reason we're forging a number of these dealer group partnerships and partnerships with our own stores is because we're very clear that we are very good at brand, we're very good at having so many customers, building experience, building digital technologies, building AI tools.

We think that the other companies can do what they can do, the whole operational, physical side of it, right? That's the reason for the partnership.

We will stay asset-light and obviously, a physical asset-light for sure, and working-capital-light for sure.

That's it from me. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Thank you.

Hello? I think maybe...

Hello, good afternoon, sir. Thanks for taking my question.

Sir, my first question is can you throw more light on our strategic partnership that we are doing with Spinny? How you are seeing this partnership to be evolving in next one to two years?

What kind of incremental top line we are seeing from this partnership? Additionally, how we are planning to charge them?

It's via subscription-based model or the commission-based? How we are charging them?

Sure, thank you for the question. I think like we've talked about in the presentation, this is the first partnership.

We feel for our sellers or buyers of cars, and the 23 million of them on OLX and CarWale, we feel that this is a very differentiated way of doing something. You can to sell your car or buy a car which you want.

I think these partnerships with all these players, Spinny specifically, help us get that. We see a massive growth, in obviously volumes in this business and obviously revenue from this business in the coming years, I mean coming quarters and years.

This is just the beginning for us. Of course, now you will see a lot of work around retailing, and you'll see a lot of work around this buying and experience, selling experience for all users, changing or improving or and getting enhanced through AI, through all these forged partnerships over the next, few quarters and years.

Massive obviously upside on we see on both, obviously revenue and transactions. I think the one thing is our our charges on this would be on margin sharing, on commission basis.

That's all that that also helps as far as our overall, margins go.

Okay. My next question is on the OLX India.

I think earlier someone also asked this. The other expense for OLX India has increased YoY.

What are the key headers which led to this much increase in the expenses?

Did you hear the question, Aneesha? I couldn't fully hear the question.

I think was it revenue increase or was it cost increase?

Cost,

the other expense.

You want to answer that, Aneesha? Yeah.

I think we answered in the previous question, too. This is owing to some amount of tech investments which we have done.

There are a lot of tech initiatives that have been taken. Since it's a tooling cost, we don't expect it to go rapidly every quarter.

I think Vinay clarified this on the overall cost base, too. The cost is incurred in quarter one, which becomes the new base, but quarter-from-quarter it doesn't really move from here.

Okay. Sir, my last question would be around because of this partnership, do you guys have any few or other adverse implications because of this partnership like concentration risk or dealer network or some margin pressure can be there?

Is the question that because of the partnership the margin pressure come in? I think the margin will only improve, right, because these partnerships or any kind of relationship like this doesn't increase our cost structure.

It actually improves margins only.

Okay. Any kind of dealer network conflicts with dealers because Spinny is also be coming to the platform, and they already have a good name in the second-hand market.

So...

I think for that, all the partners we have have obviously strong names, and our strong names. I think the objective here is that to use their strength of their customers, their capability, their operational excellence and look at how our customers and our digital experience and technology capability marries so that you as a customer get the best experience.

Obviously, it is tying up with credible and very strong partners so that you can get the best of CarWale, OLX, and them.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thank you.

Hi, Vinay. Am I audible?

Hi, Keyur. Yes, we can hear you.

Congrats on a good set of numbers. Two questions from my end.

First is do we have any timeline on the new OLX products that we've spoken about in the past, escrow, logistics, some of the others? Also on the Elite Sellers, any numbers that you can share in terms of the traction that you're seeing?

Sure. A lot of the products we've talked about in the 30th June presentation, even today, are some of them are already out and launched.

The rest are within this year, for sure, right? Maybe next quarter, maybe the quarter after that.

These are not long-term products. These are immediate, right, which we talk.

They're under work. Everything we've spoken about is is now, right?

You might see something in a few days, you might see something in one month, you might see something in three months, but everything we speak about is currently we're working on. They're not they're not very futuristic as far as we're concerned.

We're not talking about the year next year, the year after that. Everything we've spoken is now.

Like I said, some are launched, some are being launched. That's the first part.

On the Elite Seller we spoke, it's actually had tremendous traction in the last few months. A large percentage of our sellers are now adopting to be Elite Sellers.

I think almost 25%, Aneesha, correct me if I'm wrong, of our seller revenue is maybe a little more than that, is coming from Elite Seller. Obviously, it's taken off extremely well.

The number of tools we're adding to that, like I talked about, matchmaking, pricing, condition check, which will improve that number even further. It's been a massive success to, the seller program, like Elite Buyer has been to the buyer program.

We've actually formed a very strong structure where we're saying number of features which come on buyer side come on Elite Buyer, number of new features that come on seller come from the Elite Seller. In this case, both are highly paid, you have to be you have to be, pay to get these features.

Or you can continue to be a, a free user if you want to be, but then you don't get all the features of Elite Seller and Elite Buyer.

Got it. Sorry, I didn't quite catch.

Did you say 25% of OLX overall revenues would be

from... 25% of our seller revenue is what I said, I think.

Got it. And...

Approximately.

Yeah. Sure.

Okay. The second one was on the used car financing opportunity.

We again saw 30th June IDFC partnership. Besides that, anything in the offing, and also some qualitative guidance on the kind of take rate one can expect here?

This is like another very strong initiative for us. It's part of our entire used car program where, because there's so many buyers, almost all car buyers, used car buyers, come to OLX or CarWale, and obviously our approach is to integrate finance here.

Also, you have to remember, used car financing in India is very underpenetrated. I think some data shows that less than 20%, 25% of used car buyers get organized loans.

Obviously, with the used car market at 5, 6 million cars growing and likely to be 8 to 10 million cars the next four to five years, used car financing will become a massive business for banks, NBFCs, and companies like ours. I think this is our initiative to say, "Listen, if someone's buying a used car," and like I told you, 25 million people approximate 23 million people a year come for used car buying and selling on OLX or CarWale, how do you get them loans, right?

IDFC was our first such partnership, which has gone live. Obviously, we are talking to a couple of other very large banks and NBFCs.

Our attempt is that anybody coming on our platform to buy a car should get a very simple, easy, one-click journey to buy a loan for that car, right? We have an advantage in this business, obviously, because all the customers are here.

Obviously, we have a distinct advantage here. We're just building digital capability, integrating deeply with these banks to make sure the experience is great.

Take rates will come, and take rates are very high in the used car financing business. They tend to be anything between 2% to 3% depending what you do.

Obviously, our attempt is more than the take rate right now is to really gather a certain market share of loans across these financiers, right, and across these consumers, and to ourselves stay asset-light. We're not going to lend money to people, that's not our nature.

In a complete marketplace model, build this business which has limitless potential in the next 1, 2, 3, 4 years. I must also say that we're doing the same for used products, where we also want if you're going to buy a used television or a used refrigerator or a phone, we are able to offer used product loan for that purpose, which is a much smaller loan.

That's also underway in various partnerships, which we'll shortly announce, so that if you come here and buy a used phone, you get a loan seamlessly for that, or a used refrigerator, or a used television, for that matter.

Understood. No, and so this would be a kind of a pre-approved or a product

which

basically online can done entirely, there's nothing offline?

Absolutely. The attempt is to do that.

I think and obviously, it requires work with multiple financiers and integrating and technology and risk capability. That's underway right now for used products, right, so that it is a very easy process once you're identified to get your loan.

Got it. Perfect.

That's it from me. Thank you.

Hi. Am I audible?

Yes, we can hear you. Hi, Jinesh.

Hi, Jinesh.

Hi. Quickly on the Spinny partnership, correct me if I'm wrong with respect to understanding.

If Spinny is today displaying 100 ads on OLX and 20 cars get sold, today we are getting listing fees for the 100 cars. Under the new partnership, we will be getting transaction-based revenues on the 20 cars which get sold.

That's the simple way to think about this partnership? Obviously, there are other nuances to

that. I think the biggest thing in the partnership is that if you are a seller or a buyer, how do we integrate your experience so that it's seamless and digital for you with our technology and customers, and obviously your physical capability?

The monetization part of that is what the question is, of course, if a certain margin per car is earned, what percentage of that margin is shared and how it is shared. I think we obviously feel that's highly advantageous for us when we go into a margin share model.

Right. Effectively, we move from fixed pricing to transaction-based or outcome-based pricing for our listing...

It's moving more from a listing-driven model for all our partners, with multiple dealers and multiple players probably adding on to a listing-driven model, adding a transaction layer on top.

Got it. In this partnership, then we won't be charging listing fees from Spinny, it would be sharing the margin.

I don't want to get specific disclose about Spinny because this whole partnership model is not just about, obviously for us Spinny is a very strong partner and a very strong business,

but

it is really about how we take this across multiple products and multiple partners.

Got it. One of the challenges which we had on OLX or CarWale with respect to the GMV was that it was difficult to ascertain whether transaction happened on the platform or not.

How does that get solved

in this case... I don't think we're trying to solve that.

That's not the attempt. You're

not trying to solve that,

just that... I think we have a market soul feature which gives us some indication how many people mark or sell products.

The purpose of a lot of this is so that if you're selling a phone or you're buying a car or a bike, we're able to go through all the layers of those frictions for you, right, from identifying a person to judging the condition of the product, to giving you good quality products, to pricing it correctly, to the logistics and delivery of it.

Therefore,

there's this series of partnerships. That's the attempt.

I think so that right from the time you want to sell or buy something to the time you actually do it, whether you do it in 10 minutes or whether you do it in 10 hours,

we're there

in that entire process helping you. That's the goal of the product team, it's not anything else at this point.

Sure. No, that is well understood.

Spinny will continue to leverage on their own platform as well, like they do today?

Of course, Spinny is a very strong company and they do their own thing. We are partners with them for this product.

They continue doing what they're doing, and of course, OLX and CarWale continue to do what they're doing. I think today the world has come where you forge partnerships which are win-win.

Being the kind of company and excellent company they are and our strengths are very clear as well, being the digital platform we are, it's a partnership which is ideal for both companies.

Okay. Any sense on scale of Spinny in terms of the number of used cars they sell in a year?

Honestly, this is more an earnings call. This is not about the Spinny partnership, I would just like to defer it and maybe some of these things is something they could answer.

As I said, this is just an earnings call. This is not about the Spinny partnership, this call.

Got it. Last question on this partnership.

You indicated that this is the first partnership, we'll have few more. In terms of the salience of large dealership groups to OLX and CarWale, any sense on either in terms of number of listings large dealerships would have or percentage of listings these large dealerships would have on OLX?

We're not going to be able to quantify them now just for you in this conversation, but the idea is the same. The idea is that, listen, suppose you're a large luxury dealership or you're a large small car dealership, you have a strength in some of these buyers and sellers of used products, right, or you have a strength in operational capability, which we could leverage.

That is the attempt here. I think the attempt is that, listen, how do you get your users and your capability and marry the physical side of that business?

That's fair. Aneesha, lastly on the tax rate.

Going forward, obviously, OLX will be on normalized tax

and

consumer business will continue to be on lower tax for another couple of years

or so, and

console will be around 23%, 24%. That's the way to think about the

right

tax rate? Because of tax shelters.

Correct.

That's

the way to look at it.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you, Jinesh.

Thank you.

Thank you. I would like to thank the management for taking their time out for the conference today, and also to all the participants.

If you have any queries, feel free to contact us. We are MUFG InTime, investor relations advisors to CarTrade Tech Limited.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.