Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Urban Company's Q2 FY27 earnings call. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now completed one full year as a listed company, and it has been a year of strong growth and solid execution.

Every segment of our business has scaled well, growth has stepped up, and Q2 only saw that momentum continuing further. On a consolidated basis, net transaction value grew 39.1% year-on-year to reach 1,432.3 crores, and revenue from operations grew 41.4% year-on-year to reach 537.3 crores.

Our orders delivered more than doubled year-on-year to reach 15.1 million, and annual transacting users grew 34.5% to reach almost 10 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss recorded was 144 crores, but this reflected a 174 crore investment in InstaHelp.

Excluding InstaHelp, adjusted EBITDA was 30 crores positive, up 213% year-on-year. For the purposes of this call, we want to share three key messages with the investor and analyst community.

First, our growth has stepped up structurally, and every business has a very long runway for growth. Consolidated NTV has grown by almost 40% for three straight quarters, well ahead of our pre-listing trend.

That growth comes from faster new user acquisition, which has been up 46.3% over this period, better repeat behavior, which keeps us compounding, and densification of our micromarkets that make our services faster, cheaper, and better. India Consumer Services, our core business, grew 26.3% year-on-year in the current quarter, Q2.

I might remind our listeners that this growth has come off of a tougher base, and Q2 last year was 900 basis points higher in year-on-year growth compared to Q1 last year. Further, festive season this year is falling entirely into Q3.

We're quite happy with the 26.3% year-on-year growth. More importantly, in the India Consumer Services business, we feel that our penetration runway is very long.

For our largest categories in our top eight cities, penetration continues to be well below 10%, and our Tier 2 cities are now growing much faster and becoming a strong second engine for growth. Coming to our international markets, we grew at 66.2% year-on-year.

UAE is a very large market for us, and despite the war, it has continued to grow very well. All concerns around growth in that market are now well and truly behind us.

Native recorded another strong quarter of growth with 35.4% year-on-year growth. This was despite the festive sales moving completely into Q3.

We expect the overall year-on-year growth of Q2 and Q3 put together to be in the range of 50 to 55%. In InstaHelp, we continue to be aggressive.

Orders grew 63% quarter-on-quarter to reach 6.23 million. In the micromarkets of InstaHelp, which run alongside our core business, about 45% of all new users to the platform now come from InstaHelp.

That was the first point, which is that growth has materially stepped up. It is structural, and every business in our view has now got a long runway for growth.

Second, the growth is driving operating leverage. The core is now profitable with expanding margins year-on-year, and we are investing aggressively in InstaHelp by choice.

Adjusted EBITDA excluding InstaHelp was at 30 crores this quarter, up 213% year-on-year, and 119 crores for the past three quarters, up 175% year-on-year. During Q2 FY27, India Consumer Services saw margin improvement of 110 basis points year-on-year to reach 3.5%.

International saw 190 basis points margin improvement year-on-year to reach 2% of NTV. Native's loss margin narrowed by 220 basis points year-on-year.

Even in InstaHelp, where we continued to make meaningful investments as a deliberate choice to cement our market leadership, the unit economics improved with density, and loss per order fell 19% quarter-on-quarter from ₹346 to ₹279. That's the second point which we want to reiterate, which is that our core businesses are now getting more profitable with expanding margins.

This is driven by the operating leverage that growth provides, and we are investing aggressively in InstaHelp by choice. The third and last point is that we are firmly on track to achieving the targets that we had set out for ourselves, and we are raising capital for strategic flexibility.

We closed the quarter with 1,901 crores of cash and treasury investments on our balance sheet and a core business that generated 119 crores of adjusted EBITDA over the past three quarters. Our businesses now are materially larger than they were at the time of listing.

Growth has stepped up, and we now operate three businesses at scale with proven economics. The proposed raise of up to 2,500 crores is about flexibility.

It lets us invest with conviction across each of these business lines, cement our leadership in InstaHelp, and pursue inorganic opportunities selectively without trading off one for the other. I want to underscore that we believe we are firmly on track to achieving our adjusted EBITDA breakeven goal by Q3 FY28, and we are very confident now, more than ever before, of achieving the 1,000 crores adjusted EBITDA goal that we set out for FY31.

With that, we'd be happy to take questions from the analyst community. Thank you.

I hope I'm audible.

Yes, Gaurav. Good evening.

Hi. Congrats on great execution.

I have a couple of questions. For the India core Consumer Services, the instant proposition has really helped probably to get better repeat, higher frequency and lower churn.

What is driving the higher pace of the new customer acquisition, and how sustainable it is? My second question is on average spend per customer, which historically has grown at 6%, 7% year-on-year.

It's come out a little slower in the current quarter at 3%. Anything to read in this number?

The last question is on your foray into the residential AC segment. It'll be great to get a little bit of thought on our edge and right to win as far as the product is concerned, as far as the distribution capabilities are concerned.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gaurav, for your questions. Let me start with India core.

You're right, the growth has continued to remain very healthy. It is driven in large part by both new user acquisition, as well as our cohorts and repeat base compounding well.

I think on the new user acquisition side, it's a combination of three things, Gaurav. One is of course, the proposition itself has become stronger for customers.

With densification, what we're able to do is deliver our services faster under UC Instant. Increasingly now, consumers are able to see in the top seven, eight cities services available within the hour and very often within 30 minutes or so.

Secondly, we've continued to make meaningful investments in training, in SOPs, in tooling, and quality control via AI. That compounds the word of mouth faster, which is the biggest source of acquisition for us from a new user standpoint.

Third is that in pockets, we have also leveraged the utilization improvements that we have driven to give more value to users in terms of better pricing. I think the underlying proposition has strengthened, and that has helped us.

The second factor that is driving acceleration for new users is Tier 2 markets. As we have mentioned in the letter as well, Tier 2 is now growing much faster.

I think it's a function of Tier 2 users essentially getting these services, a wider assortment of services are now available to them. Our own focus on Tier 2 markets in the past few quarters has increased, and we've started to double down, and we will continue to do that for the coming years ahead.

Finally, we've stepped up on customer marketing as well, and that would have been visible in the India core P&L that we've drawn out. Combination of all the three things has stepped up new users.

We are very confident of this trajectory continuing. We see a long growth runway, as I mentioned at the start of the call as well.

On average spend, I think it's nothing material to talk about. I think it's a combination of some mix change, a little bit of the festive season moving further along this year, and in pockets, as I mentioned, we've passed on the benefits of densification to consumers.

On the residential AC side, our view is that we've now operated in the segment of air conditioning servicing and repair for close to 11, 12 years ever since the inception of the company. There's a lot of data and knowledge that we have gathered on what are the consumer pain points and what are some of the unmet needs of the consumers.

Based on those data points and our own understanding of the market and the unmet needs, we have been quietly working on creating an innovative, cutting-edge product. We will be very calibrated and measured in terms of this particular endeavor and the rollout of this.

We expect the next year or two to be more about learning and mostly from a channel standpoint as well. I think we will limit it largely to our app.

The idea is to learn in the first year or two, to get feedback from consumers. We believe we are on track to launching an air conditioner device that will be very, very innovative and much like all our other products in Native will bring a breath of fresh air to the category.

At the same time, we want to be very, very calibrated and measured in the way we approach. Native has been doing very well.

Growth has been strong, and margins have been improving, and we now believe we're in touching distance of profitability in Native, and we would like that trajectory to continue essentially. Our foray into AC should not materially change that trajectory.

Thank you. All the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening.

Thank you for taking my questions. I also have three questions and maybe my first question would be on the use of proceeds from the announced potential capital raise.

When you mentioned that you may also potentially look at some acquisitions or inorganic opportunities, can you maybe provide some color in which part of your business or segment would you need to build capability through M&A? Second, when you think about M&A, could these be bolt-on acquisitions?

How are you thinking about the range of scale of what kind of target you may look to acquire? That'll be my first question.

Yeah.

Manish, so as I mentioned in the opening remarks, the purpose of this fundraise is predominantly to ensure that we have strategic flexibility over the next five to 10 years and we have a strong balance sheet to execute on our vision, which is to build a much, much larger company than we are today. In fact, we still believe we're a very small company in the scheme of things, and our ambition is to go beyond being just a home services company and eventually become the trusted home platform for Indian consumers, almost the operating system for the Indian home.

Given that ambition, we want the strategic flexibility over the next few years to invest in all our areas of business, whether it's India core, international, Native, and InstaHelp. Each of them play a distinctly important role.

We think that this fundraise, which is up to 2,500 crores, will significantly strengthen the balance sheet and give us that flexibility. We've talked about inorganic opportunities as well, and I would say in India core, Native, and our international markets, the ecosystem around us has evolved.

There is nothing imminent, but we will always be open and look out for the right opportunities. If there is an attractive opportunity at the right valuation that we believe can be meaningfully accretive to the company and create long-term shareholder value, we are very much open to doing that.

That I think is our current thought process.

Thank you, Abhiraj. If I may just ask a follow-on on that one.

Just on your India core services where you are by far the market leader or probably are the only player that is out there, you are a multicategory platform, could there be any possibility of acquisition in that vertical? I'm just trying to think that what might you need through M&A in your core services where you already have multicategory.

I'm just trying to get some flavor even if qualitatively as to what kind of capabilities you would want to build through M&A, if at all you're able to share that.

Yeah. It's a good question.

I think maybe I'll clip the question one level higher and answer at a more sort of framework level. I think the framework we will use is either an M&A should allow us to consolidate a particular market that we find ourselves in, or it should allow us to enter a new category {slash} market.

Now given that we've explicitly said in the past as well that we don't look to enter any new countries. For India core, if at all we do an M&A, it would be to add on categories that we don't operate in today, where we feel that the decision of build versus buy maybe tilting in favor of buy provided things are from a valuation standpoint accretive.

I would say that's the sort of broad framework that we would look at. We would look at a similar framework within our other lines of businesses as well.

Very clear. Thank you, Abhiraj.

My second question of course, let's say when you look at InstaHelp as a business, the order value or net order value continues to come down right now, and I'm assuming that versus what you would have thought two or three quarters ago, the competitive intensity probably has remained elevated for a prolonged period of time. Despite that, like you said, you remain confident of delivering on your breakeven target of third quarter next fiscal year.

Is that a function of your core businesses including international and Native doing that much better versus your own expectations in terms of profitability and that's why you still remain confident of delivering breakeven at a company level, or you think how things evolve in InstaHelp in the next one or two quarters will actually determine whether you get there or not? Or just trying to get a sense, just despite that, could still deliver breakeven if competition remains high in InstaHelp?

Yes. Manish, I think why we remain confident on achieving the Q3 FY28 breakeven goal at a consolidated level is a function of two things.

One, I think the growth trajectory and the operating leverage that that growth brings to our three main businesses, India core, international, and Native, is strong. Certainly much stronger and much ahead of what our expectations were a year back at the time of the IPO and in the first earnings call when we set out these targets.

That gives us a significant additional cushion, I would say, and not just incremental additional cushion. Two, in InstaHelp, and I want to reiterate this point, I don't think the losses are high because of competitive intensity.

The losses are high because we are choosing to keep them high, and we are choosing to invest from a position of strength because we have a certain view on the TAM, the opportunity, and how we would like to play it. Since the beginning of this year, we have been executing on a certain plan with deliberation.

That plan we have drawn out pretty much all the way for the next six to eight quarters. Now, you are obviously in a competitive environment reacting tactically to ongoing situations.

At the highest level, I think it's not that we are reacting to competitive intensity. If anything, our aggression is what the others have to keep up with.

We have a certain plan in place. We are executing on that plan, and we believe that that plan will fructify into both us achieving the targets that we set out to achieve as well as cementing our leadership position in InstaHelp.

Thank you, Abhiraj. Very clear.

Just my last question is a follow-on to your response to Gaurav's question earlier on the potential foray in air conditioner, and thank you for providing color that next one to two years would be like a learning phase. Again, still trying to understand when you look at, let's say, your various businesses, and all of them are doing really well from a gross perspective, India core, like you said, is accelerating, Tier 2 is seeing good traction there, InstaHelp of course is competitive and you're also investing there, international has again accelerated, right?

All businesses are doing well, and in that waterfall, when Native is yet not profitable, yes, it's getting there, but still not profitable, and other businesses also maybe potentially require some growth investments and they're doing well, why choose a new category to enter into when so many other parts of the businesses are doing well and may do even better if you continue to invest there? Just trying to understand from a capital allocation waterfall perspective, how does air conditioning take, let's say, a priority or where does that fit in terms of amount of allocation that we may see?

Yeah. In our view, Native is well and truly on track to achieve its profitability goals.

I think it will actually happen pretty soon. That's part of the reason why we think from a timing perspective, it's the right time as well.

From a capital allocation standpoint, our own view is that we want to be fairly disciplined in the build-out of AC. Like I said, once Native is profitable, we want that trajectory to continue.

We don't want a foray into AC to in any which way deviate from that trajectory. In fact, we've mentioned in the letter as well that R&D expenses in Native are today a bulk of the EBITDA losses.

From that, one can derive where the underlying profitability already is tracking. See, finally, an entry into any new category is a function of, one doesn't think about just the next few quarters, but takes a long-term view.

In the long term, we believe that this is a very attractive category for Native. We do almost 10 times more air conditioner servicing, repair, and installation orders compared to water purifiers.

The category is also perhaps 10 times larger in terms of TAM. There are genuine pain points which over the last 10, 12 years of building this category from a servicing standpoint, we have seen consumers experience.

We will be very, very calibrated, measured, learn, go slow, and set this business up for long-term success. Don't think we're looking at any immediate numbers in the first one or two years.

I think it's all about keeping things in a learning phase and thinking about how do we succeed over the next five, 10 years. From that long-term picture perspective, I would say it is a fairly strong pillar for Native.

Thank you, Abhiraj. Really appreciate your responses and insight.

All the best.

Thank you, Manish.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

Abhiraj, really a big-picture question to think about and this is what I'm trying to grapple out for. You guys had always maintained a stance that you as Urban Company don't need cash.

You have a good amount of cash on your balance sheet. Trying to understand what has now changed, which is now leading to dilution to shareholders.

Understand from your comments today that competition at InstaHelp has not changed. While it is intense, it is not increased.

I also understand the growth has stepped up and there is an operational leverage, which is coming up on the back of it. Yet, when I look at your FY31 target, it's unchanged, right?

How to think about the capital being raised? Will it be invested for growth, and hence should we see upside to that FY31 EBITDA target?

Good question, Sachin. See, we are very clear that this capital is being raised for strategic flexibility and predominantly for growth.

I think from a build-out of our existing organic businesses as well as InstaHelp, to be honest, the trajectory that we are on, the current balance sheet is more than sufficient. If it was not, we would have changed the short- to medium-term targets, but those remain unchanged.

We believe that the additional capital is not necessarily to fund the losses in InstaHelp or for the short-term needs that the other businesses might have, but more from a longer-term perspective to provide strategic cushion, definitely to look at any interesting inorganic opportunities, which given where Insta's trajectory is, the current balance sheet does not provide that level of strategic flexibility. Absolutely, as and when we do invest, these investments will be growth investments, and they should result in a higher trajectory of top line and bottom line in the medium to long term, which is one of the reasons why I underscored that we remain extremely confident of that long-term target of 1,000 crores by FY31.

If I'm saying that out on the earnings call, then obviously internally, our assumptions would be much, much higher.

Yeah. Sorry to stick on to this point, but the question I'm trying to get at is why now, because you're saying that you needed capital, let's say, from 10-year point of view where your core consumer business is clearly EBITDA is increasing and there is that guidance of roughly 100 bps improvement in margin every quarter.

Clearly with the accelerated growth as well as we think it's improving, you do see that incremental cash which is coming. On Native, you're saying that the company despite the foray into ACs will be in the profitable trajectory.

International is also increasing, and InstaHelp is what you guys are looking to choose to invest. I'm trying to understand that in that context, clearly you do have that flexibility.

What do you mean by incremental flexibility, what you want, and why now from a capital raise point of view?

Yeah. No, that's a good question, Sachin.

I think see, there's never a perfect time to do these things. The very definition of flexibility is that the sooner you do it, the more flexibility you have.

I think today, for instance, I wouldn't say that we enjoy a lot of flexibility from the current balance sheet standpoint, given where Insta's losses are and the other requirements. At this point in time, the current balance sheet allows us to execute precisely on the plan that we have laid out for ourselves in an organic fashion.

I think the incremental capital allows us to be more aggressive, see newer opportunities that may come along, look at inorganic acquisitions more closely, and in the worst-case scenario, if the TAM for Insta is significantly larger than we are envisaging and the competitive intensity dramatically increases, it gives us the option to play on the front foot without being defensive. That's about it.

Got it. Last question from my side is, when you say you're open for acquisitions, ideally should we also think about a potential acquisition hints to the InstaHelp category where, where let's say the interest rates in US are, it's not easy for anyone to raise incremental capital, with you guys sitting in on that, let's say, good amount of cash, is that an M&A opportunity you guys are also open to explore?

Sachin, never say never, but highly unlikely.

Cool. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Hi.

Am I audible?

Yes, Abhishek. Please go ahead.

Hi, Abhiraj. Congrats on another good quarter.

My question is from perspective of supply of experts as well as helps. On the InstaHelp side, do you think in the near to the medium term, the supply or the recruitment of helps becomes a rate limiter on growth?

To that effect, should somebody choose to invest also should somebody kind of come in and offer slightly better take rates to our experts and our helps, how do we safeguard against that and does that impact growth in any way? The second question again on the InstaHelp side is do we have a working unit economics steady-state picture that we have in our mind that we're working with that we aim to achieve in the next two to three years?

Understand it may be a high single-digit EBITDA business, but in terms of sacrificing those margins for the next three to four years, do we believe that more interventions would lead to outsized growth? Because the TAM that we put out still kind of limits the ceiling to which InstaHelp can grow.

How does investments kind of pan into that whole situation? Thank you.

Yeah. Abhishek, in terms of the availability of supply, and this answer is true as much for Insta as it is for the rest of our business.

I would differentiate between availability of people and the ability to recruit, train, onboard, and retain the right skilled talent from a long-term perspective. People are available.

I don't think there's a shortage of that. Especially if the earnings proposition is strong, and we've given out our latest update on the Earnings Index where you'll see that the earnings proposition of the platform continues to be very strong across Insta and core.

I think people would always want to join, be part of a formal workforce, have a dignified life, have access to middle-class earnings as well as all the other benefits that we provide in terms of life, health, and accidental insurance, access to credit, upskilling, etc. There's definitely across the two segments, the top of the funnel is not the challenge.

I think the challenge is can you identify the right people who have the customer centricity, the sincerity to work with purpose, who see a long-term pathway on the platform. Then do you invest correctly in the training and onboarding and setting them up for success.

Then over their life cycle, are you able to support them well so that they get retained and their earnings grow and their overall ratings and reputation on the platform compounds. I think that's what this whole business is about.

That's where our focus is. It's easy to add bodies in this business.

It's hard to retain the right supply and maintain a very low partner churn, right? I think some of these things tend to play out in the medium term.

That's where we are focused on. Take rates, I think, see, eventually experts care about net income in their hand.

That's what they really care about. They look at, hey, I'm committing a certain amount of time to the platform, what is my absolute earnings?

It's less about take rate for services. It's more about absolute earnings.

There we feel we are very competitive as a function of densification, as a function of our brand, as a function of the scale that we have. We will continue to work harder and harder to ensure that the earnings on the platform remain best in class.

On the second point of the steady-state picture of InstaHelp, I think we do have a view, and a very clear view there. We continue to see if our older micromarkets are tracking towards that view.

Without getting into many nitty-gritties of that view, at the highest level, as I have mentioned in a few earlier calls as well, we will need the pricing to reach roughly about ₹200 an hour, and the net order value to reach roughly about ₹300, given the average order is about 1 and 1/2 hours. This is because our view is that even with the best utilization, you need about ₹150 an hour of payout for every utilized hour to the gig worker.

Then the remaining ₹50 is essentially all your costs if you run a well-oiled, efficient machinery at scale. We think we will get there.

We are very confident. While the current numbers and the current NOV's declining trajectory may raise some concerns amongst the investor and analyst community, we have enough evidence internally.

If we didn't, we wouldn't be this aggressive. We have that evidence, but it will be a long journey.

We will have to be patient. That long journey is by choice for us as a company and also a function of the broader market that we find ourselves in.

It isn't going to happen in a year or a couple of years. As we've said earlier, our breakeven target for InstaHelp is as far out as FY31.

We're in no rush. We want to invest in this category.

We want to see how large it can become. We have a view on the TAM.

We've reiterated that view in the current letter as well. Our view remains unchanged.

It's a bottom-up view based on very, very granular data points and our understanding of how the customer segment is. Today, the orders are obviously scaling very fast, but I do want to call out that it is at a very low NOV for the industry.

There is a percentage of these orders that are for the industry as a whole being bought. Once pricing fully corrects, we will see a downward correction in the orders as well.

That's not something that's hard to imagine. It will still be net incremental to the NTV.

With that overall understanding of where the market will be with having operated in micromarkets which are less competitive at near full price and having seen how those micromarkets behave for a longer period of time and extrapolating the number of such micromarkets, the number of such households in the top 15 cities, we think the market is attractive, but it is range-bound. It's not one that will throw up either multiple winners or have unbounded growth for a single player as well.

It will be a good, attractive, strong category in the long run for Urban Company. More than its own NTV and its own P&L, it will drive a lot of additional benefit for the platform, because if our vision is to go beyond being a home services company into being the preferred home platform, the trusted home platform for India, then that home platform cannot exist without a frequency layer.

That frequency layer is InstaHelp. It's a very fundamental, strategic part of that vision, which is why we're investing and building ahead of the curve here.

Thanks, Abhiraj. Just a very quick follow-up on the InstaHelp piece.

From your analytics or from the use cases that your customers are using InstaHelp for, are there any surprising use cases which you think may just kind of push that TAM higher or kind of expand that TAM? If yes, which are those categories within InstaHelp that the customers are using these instant services for, and is there an ROI on kind of investing or leaning a bit heavily on these services, so that TAM kind of expands meaningfully with probably slightly lower investments?

Within the house help category, the two from prominent use cases today are, one, replacement, when your house help is not available. This stretches across both planned and unplanned leaves as well as longer leaves.

That's one big, big segment. Some of these users are also using InstaHelp for additional help over and above what their house help does.

We'll have to wait and watch if that additional help use case expands further. Then there's a segment of younger users, the ones that do not want to commit to a sort of full-time everyday house help coming to their home.

They feel that the home can be cleaned two, three times a week, eight, 10 times a month, and that's enough, and they would want the flexibility to book those on the go whenever they want it. Incidentally, the economics actually works out better for them.

That's a smaller TAM, and again, depending upon how that TAM grows and as that segment in population ages, whether its behavior reverts back to mean or actually continues with the new behavior, will determine eventually how large this category will become. At the highest level, for this category to be much larger than what we've painted, even in the letter, the last previous letter we had mentioned that the one fundamental assumption that has to change is that it has to go beyond being just replacement to being the primary house help category.

We're open to seeing evidence of that, and if there is evidence of that playing out, then that will be exciting. From the looks of it, I don't think over the next three, four, five years, that's going to happen.

It may happen over a much longer period of time. As India becomes richer, and it becomes harder and harder for people to afford having someone come to their house every single day.

That's the behavior we see in our other markets, UAE, Saudi, and Singapore are all in that behavior, and that's fundamentally where the country will eventually get to. The question is, will it get there by 2030 or not?

I want to reiterate, the TAM picture that we drew was for the next five years in the top 15 cities. Of course, over a much longer period of time, there's no debate that this will be a very, very large and attractive category, but that period of time could be much more ahead than we are imagining it to be.

We are always open. Our opinions are always strong in the moment, but loosely held, and if evidence points otherwise, there's no reason for us not to acknowledge and accept that.

Thanks so much. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you, Abhishek.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

My first question is related to your professionals growth in the India Consumer Services business. What I see is in the last two, three quarters, there has been some acceleration on that side.

This quarter, the growth was around 16%, earlier it was double digits, and I go back couple of years, it was in single digits. Now, first, I would like to understand what are the drivers here.

Is it more lower churn, densification, micromarkets, or something else? Related question to that is should sharp acceleration in the professional's growth eventually translate to better growth than what we are even delivering now?

Maybe high teens professionals growth can translate to 30% kind of a growth for your India Consumer Services NTV? Hi,

Swapnil. This is Abhay, and I'll try and answer that question.

The growth in service professionals is a leading indicator of how we see growth in the core business. This quarter's growth has been 16%, whereas the NTV has grown by 26%.

As we've shown in our Earnings Index, growth in the top line will come as a function of growth in the number of professionals, as well as an improvement in utilization. That's what we are targeting.

As the business grows, we will onboard supply ahead of demand. This quarter also has some level of onboarding ahead of the festive season.

That's also a factor. Overall, we see gains from utilization, as well as adding more active professionals to the platform, as the key to future growth.

Will it be fair to say, Abhay, that 25% is something that one should work with growth, given this the increase we have seen in recent quarters? Because earlier, the growth the professional additions was mid-teen mid- mid-single-digit kind of a number.

No,

Swapnil, I wouldn't put a specific number to the growth projections for the future. As Abhiraj had mentioned, the increase in growth has been structural.

New user acquisition is growing, retention is improving. As a factor of as a function of that, we are we're adding more professionals.

We'll wait and watch.

Got it. The other question is with respect to your instant services for Consumer Services business wherein servicing in 30 to 60 minutes.

Now, do you charge a premium here to the consumers? If not, will you no not today, maybe later tomorrow, is there any plan on that side?

A related question again to that is do you plan to extend this instant services in UAE, Singapore as well?

Right now, we don't we don't charge any premium, and in the future, we're open. It's not a decision that we've taken right right now.

It'll be a function of many considerations and factors. It's already something that has been rolled out in both UAE and Singapore as well.

Okay. Just the last one.

Obviously your contribution margin they expanded this quarter, partly because of lower customer and partner support cost, refunds, those kind of stuff. Now the question is how much more juice is left for the contribution margin in the India Consumer Services to improve, given that we are already at 22% here?

Yeah. Thanks.

Yeah. Swapnil, yes, the contribution margin has actually been showing an increasing trend, and as we explained, it's come from a lot of AI-led cost efficiencies, as well as improving profitability in our product business.

We will try to improve that further, but as we said in the past, our key lever of getting to that 9 to 10% adjusted EBITDA will largely be operating leverage. That's what we will track towards.

Just a related question to that again. Then how should we look at your the fixed cost basically, since what is happening is employee cost has also increased materially over the last few quarters in this business.

Where where exactly should we see that operating leverage start playing out? Right?

No, so, Swapnil, yes, the absolute costs have gone up. If you look at the year-on-year picture across cost lines, I think other than marketing, we have demonstrated operating leverage across the other lines.

Going forward as well, our endeavor is to demonstrate operating leverage across all the three lines, which is salaries, marketing, and G&A. As we've mentioned in the letter, we would prefer to invest for growth where possible, while improving our margin in a calibrated fashion.

That's what you will see play out as we invest in the number of initiatives we've spoken about.

Got it. Thanks a lot, Abhay.

Thank you.

Hi, Abhiraj. Am I audible?

Yes, Srinath. Hi.

Good evening. Hi.

Hi.

Two set of questions, one on Native. Want to understand how has the experience been.

We have now built some level of offline distribution. Have we attracted a new set of customers or a different set of customers?

How do you see a pan-India roll-out in modern retail? Just wanted to hear your views.

Yeah. Srinath, I think I would say that the percentage of business that comes from offline is still very small right now.

It's still very much in the learning phase. The bulk of the business continues to come from e-commerce platforms and our own app.

Early response has been good, especially in modern retail. We're we're learning.

It would it would take some time for us to understand that. We also don't want to be in a rush.

We want the brand and the product quality to continue to compound. With our new launches, the M3 water purifier that has a, three-year no questions asked filter life and a and a comprehensive warranty is truly, in my view, state-of-the-art, best water purifier out there.

The Lock Ultra, I think we are seeing pull now over time from the offline ecosystem as well. We'll be calibrated and slowly and steadily build out that ecosystem.

Perfect. My second question is on InstaMaid Gold.

Want to understand how has been the customer feedback. Any qualitative understanding you can share on how this rollout has played on NPS or on broader customer feedback?

Second is wanted to understand how many micromarkets have we rolled this out? Have we already rolled it out to all key micromarkets where we already have density?

The last one on InstaHelp is we've seen significant service professional addition in InstaHelp this quarter. Would it be fair to assume we have solved for availability and significant improvement in liquidity coefficient for the category, especially with the festive season coming in which sees some level of spike in InstaHelp?

Yeah. I think Gold, is, I'd say, still early in its rollout.

The early results are very promising. Premiumization is something that we've done across all our core categories as well, whether it's with Salon Luxe, Men's Grooming Royale, etc., etc.

We wanted to do that early in the journey of InstaHelp rather than later and and see, and learn. I I would say it's still still in the early phases.

We can share more at the right time. Just given the dynamics of the category today, I think what I can share is that it's it's it's an interesting, exciting, promising and we certainly intend to continue to build on Gold and and scale it out.

You're right. I think, we've been hard at work and aggressively onboarding supply in the last three, four months in the run-up to the festive season and also to improve the liquidity coefficient.

We've seen an improvement in the liquidity coefficient. It it helps that, demand continues to be strong.

In many pockets, demand is running ahead of supply. I think in the last quarter, we've we've made gained big strides towards bridging that gap.

Cool. Thanks a lot and all the best here.

Thank you, Srinath.