MapmyIndia's Open Order Book Up 49% To ₹1,372 Cr | NDTV Profit
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00We are now in conversation with Rohan Varma, CEO and Executive Director at MapMyIndia.
00:07Rohan, good morning or rather good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining in.
00:12Let's address, well, your earnings at hand. I also have with me my colleague Rucha,
00:18who has also looked at the company very closely. So both Rucha and I will, of course,
00:22be talking to you about the quarter gone by. But, well, right at the top, Rohan,
00:28your assessment of the quarter, it looks very strong to me in terms of your operations.
00:34What's the way forward? What can we expect in the new financial year?
00:38Sure. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, it was a great quarter, I think, and good,
00:43very good year. We grew, you know, 35 percent revenue and also our EBITDA margins were 41
00:51and PAT margins were 32 percent. What's also been heartening is the open order book that we've
00:57generated at the end of the year. You know, from 918 crores at the beginning of last year and 700
01:05crores the year before, we're now up to 1,372 crores as an open order book, which is a growth
01:11of about 50 percent. And so that sets us up very nicely for the years to come as well.
01:18Our goal is, as we've stated last year, to cross the 1,000 crore rupee milestone by FY27, FY28,
01:28which is about a 35 to 40 percent CAGR. And if you look at the last three years' track record,
01:35it is a 38 percent CAGR in terms of revenue. And again, like I said, the open order book.
01:41So we're fairly happy with how the quarter and year went by. And looking at the next few years,
01:48the medium term, quite confidently as well. Sure, sir. Thank you so much for that,
01:53Ruchar, this side. On the 1,000 crore revenue marked by FY27, FY28, I would like some more
01:59perspective on which segment do you expect this kind of run rate, you know, is it more towards
02:06the corporate or the government side, which you likely mentioned in the conference call.
02:11Just wanted to know your trajectory across the segments going ahead. Sure. You know, we have
02:18segments which we call automotive and mobility tech and consumer tech and enterprise digital
02:23transformation, meaning we have automotive OEM clients where we go built into new vehicles,
02:28whether four-wheeler, two-wheeler or even commercial vehicles like buses and trucks,
02:32or mobility fleets for logistics or people movement, or, as you said, corporate and
02:38government clients across different industry segments. The growth that we have been seeing
02:44and that we foresee is quite broad based. Each of those areas, you know, are sunrise sectors
02:51for our types of technologies, which are maps, analytics, IOT, drone, navigation, connected
02:58services, geospatial technologies, et cetera. And so, the growth that we foresee is also going to
03:05be broad based covering each of these sectors. And if I had to simplify it, you know, map-led
03:11business and IOT-led business are the two pillars currently for the company with drone-led business
03:17coming up as a third pillar. IOT-led business has grown phenomenally in the last year, you know,
03:24kind of 91 percent. And also, the margins of the map-led business are pretty strong,
03:29EBITDA margins of 54 percent. And in IOT, as we said before, initially the margins are low,
03:36it's a device-led or hardware-led SaaS business, but then the SaaS income kicks in and the margins
03:43grow. So, you saw the full year margins of the previous year from 1.7 percent to now 11.6 percent
03:51for the full year. And also, four quarters ago, it was 4 percent and last quarter it was 17 percent,
03:58all of this for the IOT-led business. So, in that front, you know, it's going to be broad-based
04:05growth across segments. In terms of the IOT growth, as you rightly mentioned, phenomenal growth,
04:12almost 90 percent growth in that. So, just wanted to have some perspective. In this segment, is this
04:18more of selling hardware, you know, the margin from the hardware rentals or is it more towards
04:24providing the software as a service to the clients? Sure. It starts with selling the hardware,
04:32but then the SaaS income kicks in because it's the software that people are using to, let's say,
04:37monitor the movement of vehicles or get video analytics as to the safety of the vehicle
04:43movement or optimization of logistics or fleet management. So, it is primarily actually a software
04:52solution sell. It just so happens that we have to install and provide a device in the vehicle,
04:58be it a truck or a taxi or a bus or a car or a two-wheeler fleet. So, it's SaaS income essentially,
05:06but upfront we get kind of a device income as well. Sure, sir. Let me move on to the margins front,
05:15you know, just breaking down the major expenses. I see the technical outsourcing services,
05:20that part of expenses is almost more than 200 percent up YOY, while the employee benefit
05:26expenses is just marginally like 15 percent over there. So, are you like not looking towards
05:32talented employees and more towards outsourcing, which might have a more impact or hit on the
05:38margins? Actually, we are people-driven product and platform company, IP-driven, focus a lot on R&D
05:47and so in terms of people, actually that's the core of our business and that's what's driving
05:53the product and platform development, which you see MapMindia at the cutting edge of tech. The
05:58technical services outsourcing is to support certain revenue growth. So, some types of projects
06:04require or some types of solutions require feet on street, which is not so much linked to the product
06:10and platform development, it's linked to the, in some part, the revenue generation. But if you look
06:16at the business or margin structure overall, there's huge amount of operating leverage in our
06:21business because the people is a fixed cost who are building the products and platform and in that
06:27also, if you look at attrition, it's less than 10 percent, which is quite a strong
06:34kind of indicator. Growth in employees is about 10 percent. 30 percent of our 668 permanent
06:42employees are actually ESOP holders and that's how we are kind of keeping people excited and
06:48motivated and the core philosophy has always been to upscale, train the people from very early on
06:55so that we can do indigenous innovation at the cutting edge. I mean, we are led by technocrats
07:00and the team itself is so dedicated and passionate that, you know, by skilling them up, we can build
07:07innovation in India, which is world class. So, heavily focused on people, heavily focused on
07:12products and platforms and technical services outsourcing like cost of material
07:17is a small percentage and that kind of scales to support certain revenue growth.
07:24Has these trained employees come into, you know, like generate revenue for the
07:30company? Do you expect this outsourcing expenses to come down? I mean, there is always some amount
07:38of cost one has to incur when one is going through such kind of significant growth of 35 percent,
07:44as I said, or this last three year of 38 percent. So, and there's certain work that we do want to
07:51outsource. It is not core product and platform development, of course, but if there's some field
07:56activity, let's say, for example, a property tax assessment solution is given by us. There's
08:02certain activity that you have to do in the field for property taxation that is to support
08:08the revenue and so that kind of work definitely easily is an outsourceable one, whereas the
08:15property tax software or the digital twins solution that we are building, those things,
08:21of course, are done in-house. Got that. I also wanted your perspective on the drone business.
08:30I read that you were trying to, you know, have your footprints and maybe that will be another
08:36pillar or another business segment for you and, you know, on the back of the recent acquisition
08:41that you've made. So, what kind of time do you expect here and what kind of percentage of revenue
08:45or margin or any color on that side from the drone business do you expect? Sure. I mean, in drones,
08:53we are kind of offering full stack solutions to customers. The customers who want drones,
08:58we are providing drones to them. Customers who want drone-based solutions, we are providing
09:04that to them and this cuts across multiple enterprise verticals, be it in the private
09:10sector or public sector. So, all the way from digital twins of warehouses to digital twins
09:17of, you know, areas or cities where, you know, use cases which are revenue generating for the
09:23government. Those are the things that we are focused on doing, which are use case driven
09:28for all application driven based on drones and digital twins. It's going well. You know,
09:34it's something that we are building capabilities for. It is something that we're excited for,
09:39for the futures. The time around drones and drone-based solutions is quite large. I think
09:44we're one of the few, if not, actually we're the only company which brings together map,
09:49IOT and drones. And all three are very, very complimentary because when you look at the
09:55use cases of drones, which are big, one is for mapping. The other is surveillance,
09:59which is IOT driven. Third is inspection, which is a combination of map and IOT. And then there
10:05could be delivery, which is again a map navigation and IOT kind of use case. So,
10:10by having these three pillars, I think the solution we can offer to the clients is actually
10:16much more holistic than, you know, a piecemeal solution offered by somebody else in the drone
10:22value chain. All right. Rohan, we leave it at that. Thank you so much for joining us and taking
10:27us through the quarter gone by as well as what we can expect going forward. Well, and along with
10:33that, also taking a moment to thank my colleague Rucha for leading this conversation with MapMyIndia.