MakeMyTrip Limited

a Vice President of Investor Relations at MakeMyTrip Limited and welcome to our fiscal 24th quarter and full year earnings webinar. Today's event is hosted by a company leadership team comprising Rajesh Magu, our Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer and Mohit Kavya, our Group Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will also be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Security Litigation Reform Act 1995 These statements are not guarantee of future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainty, and actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information relayed during this event speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements are contained in the risk factors and forward-looking statement section of company's annual report. on Comp 20F filed with SEC on July 25th, 2023. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's Investor Relations Department. I would like to now turn the call over to Rajesh. Thank you.

Thank you, Vipul. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full year call for fiscal 2024. Fiscal year 24 started on a positive note. and only got better over the year. We are very pleased to end the year delivering a strong Q4 performance despite it being a low seasonality quarter for leisure travel. Fiscal year 24 has been a year of many record milestones. For the full year, we crossed an all-time high gross cooking value of $8 billion and we posted a record adjusted operating profit of $124 million. compared to an adjusted operating profit of $70 million in fiscal year 23. Our strategy of targeting various demand segments to serve millions of our customers and first-time travelers with a comprehensive portfolio of travel and ancillary products with personalized experiences yielding results. Gross booking value for Q4 was more than $2 billion, growing at 23% year-on-year in currency terms And the adjusted operating profit was $32.4 million, registering a growth of over 70% year-on-year. There are several macro factors that are contributing to the growth of travel and tourism in India. Robust GDP per capita growth is leading to growth in disposable income, fueling more frequent leisure breaks by people. Ongoing investments in transport infrastructure including airports, roads, railways and public transportation have improved accessibility and travel experience to various tourist destinations within the country. Spiritual tourism is also emerging as a crowd puller recently in the domestic travel and tourism market. In the last two years, we have witnessed over 97% growth in searches for spiritual destinations on our platform. With further improvement in connectivity and infrastructure, we expect this category to be a long-term growth driver. According to the Ministry of Tourism, religious tourism in India has been on an upward trajectory and can potentially grow at a trigger of over 16% between 2023 and 2030. According to WTTC, the overall travel and tourism sector will grow its contribution to the GDP to INR 36.8 trillion by 2033, approximately 7% of the Indian economy and will employ over 58.2 billion people across the country, with 1 in 10 working in this sector. As a leading travel services company in India, we continue to seek collaborative opportunities to work closely with various government agencies as we strive to nurture the growth of the tourism ecosystem in the country. We recently signed MOUs with state governments of Goa and Madhya Pradesh, aiming to foster sustainable tourism development in both states. The collaborative effort with Goa aims to propel tourism in the region into a vibrant year-round destination, moving beyond its iconic sun, sand and beaches. The MOU with Madhya Pradesh focus on various dimensions of tourism, including promoting homestays, and intensifying the focus on pilgrimage and wildlife-led travel experiences that the state has to offer through its platform. While the domestic travel and tourism sector is showing a promising outlook, outbound travel is likely to continue in the growth phase this year as well. According to UN World Tourism Organization, India is one of the top three fastest growing outbound tourism markets and is expected to become the fourth largest global spender on travel by 2030. With India's emergence as a key source market in major tourism destinations, foreign tourism boards are targeting the Indian population with incentives, campaigns, simplified visa requirements and new initiatives to attract more Indian outbound travellers. Let me now turn to the business segments, starting with our air ticketing business. Our international air ticketing business registered a strong growth of 33% year on year in this quarter. While we continue to maintain our market share of 30% plus in the domestic air business. During Q4, the total number of departures were similar to Q3. As we mentioned last quarter, we expect the domestic supply situation to gradually start improving from the second half of the upcoming financial year. Keeping aside the short-term headwinds, the long-term outlook for the Indian aviation sector is robust, driven by the expansion of aviation infrastructure as well as the quad planes ordered by the Indian carriers. On the customer experience side, we continue to innovate and enhance our product composition. We have expanded our flexibility offerings on domestic flights by offering consumers a new add-on called FlexiFly, which enables the customers to have a choice of exercising either zero cancellation or free day change option at a nominal incremental cost. We also revamped our value-added bundles to support more inclusions such as seats, meals, cabs, priority check-in, etc., along with our existing products like zero cancellation and free day change. This has helped make these bundles more accessible to our customers. To further strengthen our international outbound proposition, we launched a new initiative called Visa Guarantee, which ensures a full refund of the flight fare to the customer in case the visa gets rejected by the embassy for some reason. Our accommodation business that includes hotels, homestays and packages witnessed strong 41% year-on-year growth in adjusted margin in constant currency terms. The outlook for hospitality in India continues to be strong with most global and local chains have shared ambitious targets of signing more properties, especially in tier 2, tier 3 cities. In the last couple of quarters, large domestic and international chains have announced plans to add over 650 properties in India. on a front base of over 1000 properties. We expect strong additions in the hotel inventory across categories in the future. We continue to increase our supply. We now have 84,000 plus tellable properties on our platform with an unmatched penetration covering over 2000 plus cities in India. Our international outbound business continues to scale during the quarter, we sold room night spread across over about 25,000 hotels in over 156 countries outside India. We will continue to dialogue direct contracting in international geographies frequented by Indians in the new financial year as well. During the year, we successfully launched our hotel products on the ICTC website with an encouraging initial response. Through platforms such as ICTC, Amazon Pay, HDFC Smart Buy and My Partner platform, we continue to attract new users from smaller cities. On the customer experience side, we make significant strides in the integration of AI within our accommodation business. Now we offer condensed reviews, empowering our customers with crisp summaries. This enhancement enables swift property selection and furnishes instant insights into each property's offerings. On our international hotel platform, we continue to improve the experience for Indian travelers by making the discovery and selection easier for them by scoring properties that are high on parameters like proximity to public transport, Indian food and tourist attractions. Our homestay business continues to grow with increasing coverage of destinations and increasing customer awareness via our category building marketing efforts. During the quarter, we sold over 16,500 plus unique properties across 800 plus unique destinations with strong growth across business and leisure destinations. While MakeMyTrip brand has been leading the way in the homestay and wildlife category, we have now kick-started the journey on Goibibo as well and have rolled out multiple features for homestays enabling richer information on food and dining, host discovery, etc. Our holiday packages business continues to scale driven by our innovating offerings such as launching charter services to Bhutan from Mumbai which is a key source market. Customer service is an important aspect of the holiday business and we've been making continuous efforts to improve the post sales experience. Our NPS on holidays is steadily increasing which will improve our repeat rate in the business. Our business continues to grow well-driven by strong demand and expansion of supply with the total number of average daily bus services on the platform, reaching 35,100 from 27,800 a year earlier, an increase of over 26%. With demand keeping up and cutting diesel prices, aiding the profitability of the sector, the momentum to add new buses and supply has improved and we hope it will continue in the new financial year as well. By providing database intelligence to bus operators for deployment of this additional supply to routes that have a high demand, but pure services, we are playing our part in their network planning. International bus markets witnessed healthy growth in Q4-24 on the back of Ramadan bookings in Southeast Asian markets and Good Friday-Easter holiday bookings in Latin America. We launched RedBus in two new international markets this quarter. We went live in Vietnam on all channels with both English and Vietnamese booking funnels. We also launched our services in Cambodia with inventory from 30 plus bus operators flying on routes within Cambodia as well as to cities in Thailand and Vietnam. Our rail business continues to grow. We continue to innovate, add product features and strengthen our value proposition. As a result, we continue to gain market share in train bookings leveraging all our brands including MMTG and NRB. On Intercity Cabs, we continued strengthening the supply side coverage during the quarter. We have progressed well on our integration with Savari, post the investment announced last quarter. Working together, we are confident of unlocking the growth potential in this segment. Our corporate travel business, where both our platforms, MyBase and Quest4Travel, is witnessing strong growth. Our active corporate customer count on MyBiz is now over 56,300 plus. And for Quest to Travel, the active customer count has reached 351 large corporates compared to 249 customers in March 23. We have further bolstered our service offerings by incorporating train bookings into our MyBiz platform as well. To tailor the booking experience, Even more closely to individual preferences, we have introduced personalized hotel recommendations, streamlining the discovery process for our corporate bookers. Our MyPartner B2B2C platform for small travel agents now has 44,000 plus travel agents compared to 36,000 agents during the same period last year and is helping us reach out to customers who are largely buying their travel offline. This is particularly meaningful in the case of segments with low online presentations such as international outbound travel. And lastly, from my side, at MakeMyTrip, we believe that focus on sustainability is essential for the long-term success and resilience of travel companies as it not only protects the environment and supports local communities, but also enhances brand reputation, meets customer expectations and ensures regulatory compliance. Our social development arm, MakeMyTrip Foundation is dedicated to climate action and community empowerment and has helped us make a substantial impact across 13 Indian states, positively affecting the lives of over a million individuals. The details of our initiatives are available on MakeMyTrip Foundation's website. With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for the financial highlights of the quarter.

Thanks Vajesh and hello everyone. During the last few years we have invested in three strategic areas such as building wider and deeper offerings of travel and travel related services for our customers with improved personalization while scaling up multiple B2C and non-B2C platforms so that we can target differentiated demand segments. We have also been investing in technology to build efficiencies and increase our value proposition to our customers. As a result, our businesses bounced back strongly towards the pandemic and has also delivered better on profitability metrics. Financierate24 has been a true testament to this long-term strategy as we have delivered our best ever financial performance during the year across key metrics. With respect to the full year financial year FY24, gross bookings grew 24.9% year-on-year in constant currency terms to about $8 billion. Revenue as per ISRS grew by 35.7% year-on-year in constant currency to 782 million from about 593 million in the previous fiscal year. Profit for the year was 216.7 million compared to a loss of 11.2 million in the previous financial year. This includes certain one-off items which I'll talk about subsequently. Keeping the one-off aside, the Existed Operating Profit registered a very strong growth of 76.7% year-on-year and reached $124.2 million compared to $78.3 million in the previous financial year. As to the quarterly results, for the reported fourth quarter of this fiscal year, Gross bookings grew by 23% year-on-year in constant currency to about $2 billion compared to $1.7 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue as per AFRS grew by 38.1% year-on-year in constant currency terms to $202.9 million from $148.5 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted operating profit has registered a growth of 70.4% year-on-year and reached to a number of $32.4 million during the quarter, compared to about $19 million in the same quarter last year. Moving on to our segment results, our A-ticketing gross bookings for the quarter came in at $1.3 billion, witnessing an year-on-year growth of about 20.9% in constant currency terms. Existed margin stood at $83.7 million, registering a growth of 13.7% year-on-year in constant currency. The take rates for the air ticketing business continue to be in line at about 6.5%. For domestic air ticketing, we delivered performance in line with the market and have continued to hold on to our market share of about 30%. The highlight of the quarter and the year has been the growth in the international air ticketing businesses which has posted segment growth of over 50% compared to the last full fiscal year. The mix of international air ticketing business has also grown by about 50% during this year to about one-third of the air ticketing segment. We believe that the international ticketing business will continue to lead the growth in this segment. Crossbookings for the quarter in the hotel and packages segment were at $495.6 million, witnessing a strong growth of 28.8% year on year in constant currency. Expected margin growth was much stronger at 41.3% year on year in constant currency, resulting in an adjusted margin of $88.9 million during the quarter. The take rates in this business continue to be in line at about 7.9% during the quarter. We continue to drive supply expansion by going deeper and wider in the Indian market and growing directly contracted hotels in key international markets which are of interest to Indian overseas travelers. Our coverage and penetration in India has expanded meaningfully and we now sell accommodation room nights in over 1800 cities across the country. Our directly contracted international hotel count has been increasing in line with the launch of direct flights to new international destinations. This year, apart from offering wider options across existing cities, we have also initiated direct contracting in about 8 cities globally. In our bus ticketing business, gross bookings for the quarter were $260.6 million, growing at 23.3% year-on-year. in constant currency. Adjusted margin stood at $26.1 million, registering a strong year-on-year growth of over 36.6% in constant currency terms. The take rates for the bus business continue to come in line at about 10% for the quarter. A large part of the growth has been driven by supply expansion, whereby our private bus operators' count has increased by over 20% year-on-year. Given the short-term headwinds on the domestic air supply side, we witnessed travellers moving or preferring other modes of transport which was reflected in the strong growth in our ground transport segments. We continue to remain focused on operating cost efficiencies. Our marketing and sales promotion expenses or our customer exchange costs for the year came in at about 4.7 percentage points of gross booking compared to 5.1 percentage points in the previous year. Apart from this, continued operating leverage coming in from the significant fixed cost optimizations through the COVID impacted years has helped us expand our operating margins over the last few years. As the business is scaling, our cash generation continues to be robust. During full year of financial year 24, our registered operating profit was about $124.2 million and we added net cash of about $121 million. As a result, our year-end cash position stands at over $600 million. Besides maintaining a healthy watch list, we will continue to leverage this strong cash position to invest in potential organic and inorganic niche growth opportunities as demonstrated in the recent past. Apart from domestic air ticketing, online penetration across travel services in India is still very low. As a result, we believe there can be meaningful growth opportunities for us to pursue in the coming years. In view of the improving cash generation in the business, we may also pursue opportunistic share repurchases or buybacks. As reported in the past, we have been and will continue to leverage our employee stock option plans to be an important part of our people's strategy. We could start with opportunistic buybacks to mitigate the dilution from our share risk compensation programs. Before we get into Q&A, I would like to call out two exceptional items or one-off items impacting the current quarter as well as the full fiscal year being reported. Firstly, in view of the established trend of profitability over the last couple years, the company has recognized net deferred tax assets to the tune of $126.1 million based on an estimated utilization of carried forward losses and other deductible temporary differences against future taxable income. The other one-off gain is due to change in the carrying value of our 2028 zero coupon convertible notes. We have issued these notes in February 21 with a life of seven years and the put options in the note were at end of year three and year five. Initial accounting treatment at the time of issuance was to throw up the potential redemption value by the end of the third year, which was the first put option time. however none of the nodes were put in for redemption during the first production which came up in feb 24 with the next production being due two years later at the end of year five of the nodes the exemption value on the nodes has been discounted to arrive at the current carrying value resulting in again to the tune of about 30.6 million dollars which will be expensed over the next two years or before the next full date with that I'd like to turn the call to Vipul for Q&A.

Thanks, Mohit. Any participant wishing to ask a question can raise their hand now and we will take questions one by one. The first question is from the line of Sachin Saldankar of Bank of America. Sachin, your line has been unmuted. You may please ask your question now. Thanks, Vipul. I have three questions. First question, you know, wanted to understand a bit on domestic air supply. Rajesh, I hear you comment that in second half we should see an improvement in supply. But the question out here is with now Air India pilots as well after the Vistara pilots going on for strike and, you know, we saw obviously the impact of that. How bad could we see the impact in the near term? And an extension of that question is, should we see some impact of that as we go into the summer holidays? That's question number one. Let me pause here. Rajesh, you're on mute. Yes, still on mute. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Thanks for the question Sachin and observation is right and as we've sort of called it out as well. If you look at like full year data, fiscal year 24 over 23 and you look at the departures data and you would notice that all things considered it has still improved 5%. um we are on here so you know despite all the the issues and the noise that we hear uh it has still managed to overall improve and you know and you know that the go first has been sort of grounded and there's no sort of uh hope of that coming back etc So it seems like that despite all those issues that we see and hear, both Indigo and Air India and also Spigit have been able to sort of also get alternatives. alternatives in place in terms of just replacing some of the planes where they were in earlier or the new planes coming in as part of their expansion plans, et cetera. So my view is obviously the potential of the growth is higher. We all know that and that's the reason why from the long-term outlook standpoint, they've placed record orders, et cetera. And therefore, you know, so I'm not necessarily overly worried about mid-term to long-term outlook on domestic air supply expansion. I think that will fall in place. This recent issue of strikes, you know, thankfully on Air India Express got controlled very, very quickly. We didn't really see, obviously there will be an impact on day or two, but we didn't really see significant sort of impact beyond the couple of days that we saw. And the other thing I think in Mohit's script that he was also trying to highlight, we noticed a very interesting sort of trend as well, that if there is temporary disruption that happens on the air side, we see all the other modes of transport sort of gaining share as well. So I don't know if you noticed that, you know, we highlighted that the bus volumes growth at about 17% on our platform, rail growing at about 30% and intercity cab also growing at a very healthy percentage. So my sense is the demand momentum is, because there is momentum in demand, And if there is, and the fact that the overall experience on the other modes of transports have also improved significantly. And for any reason, whether it is supply disruption or let's say fares going up because, and the year on year fares have been up. If you look at quarter, this quarter compared to the last year, same quarter, about 15 to 17%. And then the demand moves on to the other channels. And we do have alternatives today. So overall, I would say that there will be a balancing act and should not even have even from a short-term standpoint, you know, sort of big impact on the general demand momentum that is there in the market.

Thanks, Rajesh. Very clear and articulate. Second and third questions are to Mohit. Mohit just wanted to understand personal expense and ESOPs increase into this quarter. Are there any one-offs or any specific reason which led to that? And third question is, you know, any thoughts on potential share buyback?

Sure, sure. Thanks, Sachin. You know, when it comes to the share-based compensation programs, like we have been mentioning, overall, fully a number on this count is likely to remain in the same range. So if you look at it over the last three years, this has remained around the range of about 36 to $37 million. And the current year has also come in at about $36.9 million. Generally what happens is the at the end of the year, for a variety of variables such as, you know, iteration rates, et cetera, leads to a scenario where historically we've seen that the initial three quarters, the charge out is higher and in the fourth quarter, the charge out tends to be lower. In a manner of course, this has been a reversal of trend whereby because of, you know, improving attrition rates, you know, and much better retention rates, the actual interest charge out in the fourth quarter has been higher compared to the first three quarters. But if you look at it overall for the full fiscal year, the trend remains, you know, intact and the absolute dollar amounts remain the same.

Got it. So that's a share based compensation. I presume same logic for personal expense or anything more to look into that?

Not really, largely in line because no significant kind of additions on the other personal expenses as well. Correct. And touch on buyback? On the buyback side, like I've just called out, we do have good cash surpluses now and therefore we could be open to kind of pursuing opportunistic buyback. and the initial intent is that we do have the share based compensation plans you know the one we just discussed close to about 30 to 37 million dollars of kind of you know expense that comes in auditions that comes in every year so if nothing else we should be able to start with trying to mitigate the dilution coming in from the share based competitive programs going forward so that could be the initial start in terms of foray on the share repurchase side Any timeline in mind, next six months or more? Not really. I mean, we'll keep an open mind. There is no kind of, you know, urgency around it. And therefore, we'll keep an open mind. And like I said, we'll be more opportunistic in nature rather than kind of steady state by that program.

Got it. Thank you. I'll return back to the queue. Thanks, Sachin. Next question is from the line of Manish Adhukia of Goldman Sachs. Manish, you may please ask your question now.

Thanks, Rupal. Hi, good afternoon, team. Good to chat with you. So, first question on demand. Now, it's been quite strong in this quarter, like you called out, Rajesh, despite it being a seasonally weak quarter. And like you said, maybe second half of this year, supply situation should further improve. Internationals quite strong. Hotel momentum has been great. So, I mean, trying to understand what kind of, let's say, visibility do you have On medium-term demand outlook for MakeMyTrip, I mean, in the past you said you can grow at, you know, one and a half to two X of the underlying market given online penetration is low. But I'm just trying to understand, can this 25% kind of a growth sustain for the next two, three years? What are maybe the upside or downside risks? Just maybe your thoughts on that. That's my first question.

Yeah. Thanks for asking this question, Manish. You know, I... haven't really changed from what we had shared it earlier and you call that out as well. We do believe that if the market is able to hold on to the projected numbers of double digit growth overall, this I'm talking about travel and tourism markets and some of the reports have spoken about anywhere between 10 to 13% growth. And we, like in the past, we should be able to grow higher than the overall travel and towards the market growth rate by 1.5x or there about. So I don't think that at this point in time there is anything pointing towards changing the view on that. from a midterm standpoint, because like I was just saying it earlier also, even in this quarter, it's supposed to be a low season leisure quarter, and that we were able to, if you look at the overall adjusted margin on an absolute terms, very close to the season quarter absolute number. And that's partly also because that we've been, you know, our investments into various other segments are also sort of yielding results. But it also points to the fact that there is momentum in travel in every particular use case. Now, whether it is, you know, VFR or leisure or, you know, business travel or spiritual travel and so on. So at this point in time, I would say, Manish, you know, our view remains the same. And there's nothing that I can see at least at this point in time that points towards just forming a different point of view.

Thank you, Rajesh. That's very helpful. Maybe a follow-up on that. Marketing and promotion spend obviously has remained below 5% for some time. Competitive environment seems really good. So that 1.5 to 2x, which is the growth of the underlying market, is great from the shift to online. But do you think there is opportunity over the next two, three, four years to actually grow even faster because you may win more market share given how benign competition is? Or do you think your current market share is steady state or stable market share and you don't foresee? And I'm talking about specifically the online cohort. Within the online, do you think the market share now has stabilized or do you think there's more room for that to move higher?

You know, I would manage to put it slightly differently. I mean, rather than just, you know, going with any kind of a preconceived thing or notions, I would say, and this is how we operate, by the way, or have been operating in the past as well, that we would not necessarily make any opportunity that we see. in whichever segment we see an opportunity and we are not holding on our investments. The overall brands have become more and more reliable and popular and our repeat rates have been very, very robust. But wherever we see, and you know, you've seen some of the recent investments where we have been powering different platforms to be able to get to the, you know, expand our reach for the new user acquisition, etc. So I don't think we are saying that we will hold on to any potential investment that will be required. Obviously trying, you know, need to do that intelligently, need to do that you know, data backed and more sort of looking at, you know, what kind of return on investment that you could potentially get, etc. So doing it more intelligently, but definitely not going to leave any opportunity that might be out there staring on our face and saying, you know, in this particular segment that we could grow more. Like international segments, you've seen there is more headroom and we are growing at a faster rate. You know, our homestay segment has been growing at a faster growth rate. Potentially, we've called out that there is a potential unlock that we can do for the intercity cab as well. Now, all of these areas are where there is more headroom, more potential, and we will continue to keep investing behind those.

Thank you, Ajit. That makes sense. My last question maybe to Mohit. So, on the cash addition, maybe a follow-up to the question that Sachin asked earlier. When you think about, you've called out for the number that, okay, maximum buyback of let's say $60 million. But you also talked about in your opening remarks that you would also, or you could look at organic and inorganic opportunities. So, specifically on the inorganic opportunities, is there like a threshold cap number that you have in mind that you will not, let's say, buy a set that are larger than a certain number? Given, of course, the cash balance is really large and you could, you know, potentially invest a lot. So, just trying to get some sense as to could inorganic be like a large investment area or would it not? And maybe another follow-up was once ESOP also. So, just to clarify, this 35 to 40 million will also be the run rate for the next year or is the 13 million for the quarter analyze the new run rate for ESOP? Why don't you just confirm that?

Sure, I think the second one for us so it is a 35 to 40 million dollar full year number is the run rate that i was talking about so it's best to look at it in the full year terms and not necessarily by the quarter because you could have you know a slight variations across quarters based on you know listing schedules etc so it's more the full year run rate and you know coming to the to the inorganic growth opportunities you know fortunately I don't think there is any cap in mind and we don't necessarily need to kind of put in a cap in mind right now with the kind of you know cash reserves that we have on the balance sheet and even otherwise the appetite to be able to raise you know cash if need be for any inorganic growth I think the the the realistic thought over there is that we don't necessarily see any large consolidation opportunities per se and like we've been saying the large consolidation opportunity has already played out in our case wherein we have kind of already you know seeing brands like ibupro and redbus coming into the platform so i'm coming into the group and therefore going forward the inorganic investments are likely to be more in niche spaces which can help us you know drive faster growth or kind of you know accelerate our plans in some of these segments now whether it could be you know like say for instance the last few examples have been in the city care market or say for instance in the corporate you know kind of you know demand segment or say for instance on the hotel cash side or on the forex side so we would be open to kind of looking at investment opportunities pretty much across the board except for the fact that we have historically never made any inorganic investments on the ticketing side or on the a-ticketing side. So most of the other segments is where we kind of keep looking for opportunities to augment our growth or accelerate our plan. So that is where I would leave it.

Thank you. Thanks, Manish Rajesh. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you, Manish. Thank you, Manish. The next question is from the line of Aditya Suresh of Macquarie. Aditya, you please ask your question now. Thanks for calling. And good afternoon, Mohit and Rajesh. Rajesh, in terms of your cash position and the international ambitions, maybe if you could clarify on what the international ambitions are for NICMATR, please.

What's the ambition on? Sorry?

On the international side, there was some new flow in the quarter. So, yeah, clarify on the international aspirations.

Yeah, no, of course. I was just trying to, I think the audio was not that clear. See, international, Aditya, what I was trying to highlight was there are two types of international use cases here in our business, right? So one is outbound travel. and the one that you see the numbers that you know it's particularly highlighted actually both for flights and hotels if the international outbound travel for flights and the hotels and even the packages which is part of the hotel and packages reporting segment there we see a lot of headroom both from an online penetration standpoint but also you know rising income and you know and people are looking to to sort of get back to their foreign travel as well as the supply situation improves and then that has been improving over the last year significantly. Also the fact that the visa operations for many, many countries and they're trying to five or six hour flying distance Southeast Asia, Middle East, many countries, new countries, even some parts of Europe, they have opened up the visa operation trying to sort of woo Indian tourists and travelers into their countries. And we've seen tremendous amount of inbound sort of interest coming in from all the tourism ministries of various countries as well. So that is something that we were trying to say that there is good potential opportunity of growth there. And our ambition there is clearly see our overall vision is for the Indian travelers, whether traveling within India or traveling outside of India. We would like to provide all kinds of travel services and the travel related services and that's really our focus has been and we continue to sort of keep driving that. And then the other part of international business that we have is for the different markets. So the GCC launch, for example, starting with the UAE market is for that source market. Now that has been steadily growing as well, starting with AIR and then, you know, we want to also grow hotel business, sort of organically growing that as well. Now that travel might be, you know, coming to India and back and forth between India from that region, but that travel could also be the expats from that market going to various, you know, sort of other leisure destinations for their break or for their holidays. So that is the other sort of aspect of our international business growth, if you will. And last but not the least, I would also mention, I think it's there in the script, which we called out as well, is our red bus trying to go to various international destinations. In this quarter, we launched in Vietnam and Cambodia as well. So wherever we see there is large bus market, we already have a playbook that has worked very well in India. we are taking it to those markets as well, which is again a mid-term to long-term play, but that is another sort of aspect of our international business growth, if you will.

Thanks, Rakesh. And the second piece was on margins, right, or commissions in the air business, which has kind of steadily improved and has remained healthy. So any trends here for us to think about in terms of how commission rates in the air business could kind of shake up for this year?

So, if you are kind of medium term kind of estimate is this could kind of see the overall ticketing rates could go southwards but not in a very large manner so this should largely remain around the you know the six percent mark it could be small plus or minus you know over that number but we do believe that most of the you know margins you know across segments are likely to remain stable so whether it is a ticketing you know around the six percent level whether it is orders and packages around the you know sixteen seventeen percent levels or whether it is bust ticketing around the nine and a half to kind of ten percent you know levels we do believe that margin should largely remain stable in the coming years.

Thanks a lot. And the final piece was on other expenses, right? Obviously, that's increased strongly and there's a reclassification of your distribution costs and other expenses. There's been an ongoing team moment, but if you shed more color here, should we expect, for example, say, market rate to remain at 5%, but perhaps other expenses are going to grow stronger? Any thoughts on this?

Yeah, I think even this is a, you know, better view, better presentation because kind of, you know, being started from this year onwards and therefore we started rolling out from the last few quarters and this is a continuation. So, no real change over there but it is more than appropriate representation and you know these aren't really kind of you know marketing or promotional expenses these are actually in the nature of distribution cost and therefore being kind of you know reported accordingly you may not have a very you know a good comparable in this year compared to the previous year but going forward we'll have a you know a clear-cut comparable because already the first full year of kind of you know I think the classification has gone through. So I think we'll have good comparables over there. I think we'll continue to keep looking at, you know, these expenses very differently because they're, you know, kind of not necessarily interchangeable per se.

Thanks. If I can, may I ask you one more question?

Sure.

Just thinking about the operating leverage for the platform and thinking about the staff expenses, Should our expectation be that the staff expenses, employee expenses, that line grows in tandem with revenue? Or do you see that as a potential area for operating leverage as the cross-bookings grow?

some small amount of operating leverage should keep coming in, you know, on the personal cost side, because, you know, we don't really kind of expect to add any significant number of headcount. So it will predominantly be more, you know, inflationary increases which will come through on an ongoing basis in the next few years. And hopefully the growth kind of, you know, in the business should be, you know, should be higher than that.

Excellent. Thanks, Harish. All the best. Thank you. And Savitir, the next question is from the line of Vijit Jain of Citi. Vijit, you may please ask your question now. Thank you, Akul. Hi everyone, congratulations. Reach out to members again. My first question is, you know, just looking at the other component, right, now this quarter, if I look at just comparing it with the last quarter, Generally, this is seasonally weaker quarter, so all GV rings are lower versus last quarter, but there's a pretty decent jump here and it's been a story for a while. We're just trying to understand what is the most sensitive travel segment which seems to affect the other businesses. is that is that related to the air side where the pricing has been slightly higher so some of the products you have like lock-in etc is doing very well just trying to get a sense of what the key drivers for that thesis you know has been increasing in terms of the

number of offerings that we kind of you know reporting out there right and you know historically if you would regret it used to be predominantly you know the insurance related income which used to be kind of you know coming in over there we have added a variety of you know travel related services including some travel services for instance I was talking about you know other ground transport kind of you know improving very meaningfully you know through the so things like income from raise the bidding income from intercity cash etc right now is all kind of reported in the in the other segment you would recollect we had launched a full trip money platform which is more of fintech platform wherein we've also kind of you know built in a variety of you know options for offering previous other utility services such as forex etc all of that is also kind of you know part of the other services so i think One, it is kind of, you know, natural growth coming in in the existing kind of, you know, offerings in that particular segment. And also, you know, the increase in the breadth of services that are now being kind of, you know, captured under that segment. So that's what is driving it.

Perfect. Thanks, Vaish. And my second question is just sticking to the air side of the business and the international outbound part, did that do much better this quarter versus last quarter? And how much of the air business that you see this quarter is advanced booking for the upcoming holiday season? If you can relate to that, just share what your market share in domestic aviation is like.

Sure. I think the market share in domestic aviation like Rajesh called out continues to be around the 30% level. And, you know, if I talk about, you know, the mix of international versus domestic, I think the much faster growth in international has been the kind of, you know, the highlight that I had called out not only for this quarter but across the year. so for the full year as well and you know just to give you a you know some color are mixed coming in on the adjusted margin side in the educating business from international used to be hovering around you know about 24 25 percent it's already kind of gone up to about 33 percent plus so it's seen as even again you know improvement through the fiscal year and therefore you know that's been a story for for the year across quarters, not just for Q4. And secondly, it is also to some extent coming in from the fact, like Rajesh had called out that the growth in the domestic aviation industry has been muted in view of a variety of kind of one-offs that the industry is facing. And as a result of that also, the mix has been moving more in favor of international day ticketing. So those are the two large reasons. Thanks, man.

And the last question, on the bus side, you know, I heard when you mentioned the launches in Cambodia and Vietnam, in general, overall for the bus business, specifically, what would be the share of international versus domestic right now? Which one is growing better?

I will talk about 10%. and you know the expansion or kind of you know the foray into Cambodia and Vietnam is pretty much in line with our overall strategy where we've been calling out that you know we do see an opportunity of getting into multiple markets in Southeast Asia on the bus selling side and you know you would recollect we had started with Singapore, Malaysia then you know kind of you know added more countries to it launched it in Indonesia and now we're kind of launching it in Vietnam and Cambodia. So we do believe overall Southeast Asia offers a good opportunity for expanding the Redopus brand.

I was just going to add one additional comment on that, that you know our sort of aim is to double that contribution from 10 to 20 percent in the midterm as well.

Got it, okay thanks Rajesh. Just the last question then from my side, In the budget hotels segment, any change, any new momentum that you see there? I know you've said before that the super budget continues to ail, but the cheaper part of the market has done relatively better. And I'm just wondering with all these price increases in the premium category, have you seen any change in activity in low price tier points as well on the hotel side. Do you think that is going to happen eventually or do you think that parts will remain a little bit lackadaisical?

You know, what has happened is, and as we realized over the quarters, you know, analyzing the data very, very deeply, any hotel with a price point of around 1000 or beyond, There is no problem, it has come back, the growth has come back, and that segment is also growing. And you see the growth in line with, let's say, the other segments as well. Maybe premium is growing relatively higher than maybe mid-segment and budget, just about, you know, the small gap relatively. But all of the segments are growing now. The trend that we had seen it in the past on the ultra budget which we had been speaking about less than thousand was unfortunately artificially less than thousand. They were operating or they were getting sold at some 400, 500 rupees or 600 rupees at a ridiculously low level was only because of the investments being made in the marketplace in that segment. And those investors stopped and those price points for those hotels have also come back. So if you really see effectively the same set of hotels which were just artificially being sold at a ridiculously low price, And now that correction on the price has already taken place, which means that they are getting or inching towards or moving beyond 1000 rupees a night as well. And that segment is definitely growing, you know, like I mentioned in line with the other segments as well. So I don't think, I think that is a thing of the past. Maybe there was a little bit of a fraud because of just a very very aggressive you know sort of price points in the market and that is now behind us and that is the that part you know which which which artificially came in has gone away but otherwise all other segments are now smooth.

Rajesh my last question if I can squeeze that in. On the international outbound travel from India, right, apart from, you know, maybe you adding supply on the hotel side across new cities and new geographies, is there anything else that is kind of missing from your product bouquet you think that you need to still invest in to kind of, you know, accelerate? to online or to support your international business. Just trying to think of whether there are any major investment areas that you still have to look into.

The online product on B2C is a continuous improvement and we will continue to keep doing that. We obviously will use the latest technologies to enhance the front-end experience and that's an ongoing innovation that will continue to happen. I would actually say on the platform side we are ready. On the channel side also we are ready. We actually have my partner channel that is sort of helping getting the B2B2C growth, especially for outbound international segments as well, both for flights and hotels. Because of the ticket price, there is that market that is sort of offline sitting out there and we've been able to sort of reach out to that market as well. I think the area of investment from, you know, for future sort of fueling the international growth both for flights and hotels is going to be continuously going to be on the supply side. You know, like we called out in some of the international markets on hotels, we are, you know, we are adding new destinations where Indians are going to do the direct contracting, you know, more and more. Like every quarter we will add a couple of destinations and so on. And similarly on flight side, we continue to keep working with, you know, sort of the different or multiple sources of supply and then see what are the kind of, you know, sort of permutation and combinations, including virtual interlining, for example, that we can offer to our customers, which will help them, you know, sort of, you get value for the money if you will. So those are the kind of areas, but the large area of investment there is going to be more on the supply side. On product side, the continuous innovation will continue. But on channel side, I think overall, we are in good shape there.

All right, great. Thanks, Rajiv. Those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you, Bichit. We're almost out of time. We'll take the last question from Dennis O'Kane of GGHC. Dennis, you may ask your question now. Dennis, you'll have to unmute yourself.

Not sure, Dennis. It's still on.

In that case, we will end the call now. There are a few questions in the queue. We can take them separately offline and Rajesh over to you for your closing remarks.

Thank you Vipul and thank you everyone for your time and thank you so much for your patience