Key Financial Performance

  • Reported 8% EBITDA margin for Q1 FY2027 (adjusted for PIDF)
  • Achieved 31% YoY GMV growth, accelerating from 27% in Q4 FY2026 and 23% in Q3 FY2026
  • Revenue growth accelerated to 28% YoY
  • Marketing expenses increased 27% YoY
  • Sales and service cost investment increased 27% YoY
  • Employee costs declined 6.5% YoY (excluding sales costs)
  • Cloud costs decreased YoY

Cash Position and Balance Sheet

  • Company maintains strong cash balance of ₹13,500 crore
  • Business is free cash flow generating
  • No immediate large M&A or inorganic opportunities planned
  • Small percentage of funds allocated to Margin Trading Funding (MTF) showing good ROI

Business Segment Performance

Payments Business

  • Net payment margins declined from 8.8 bps to 8.4 bps YoY (excluding PIDF incentives)
  • Payment processing margin has been steadily increasing quarter-on-quarter
  • Growth acceleration seen across all payments businesses: large merchants offline, small merchants offline, and online
  • Consumer side GTV grew 45% YoY
  • Daily transacting users exceeded January 2024 levels
  • Adding 25-30 lakh merchants annually

Financial Services

  • Postpaid business ramping up twice as fast as previous cycle
  • Double-digit number of lending partners in both Merchant Loan and Personal Loan categories
  • 7.6 lakh financial services customers added
  • 80-20 revenue mix favoring merchant side over consumer side
  • Four to six times more capital available from partners than current disbursement levels
  • Personal loan business showing healthy quarter-on-quarter growth after 8-10 challenging quarters

Wealth Management

  • Equity brokerage and mutual fund distribution identified as focus area
  • Not yet material in revenue contribution but showing good growth potential
  • MTF product showing strong product-market fit

AI Initiatives and Operational Efficiency

  • AI deployment reducing operational costs across multiple functions
  • Developed in-house AI model optimized from 200 billion to 4 billion parameters for Indian languages
  • AI applications reducing call center costs and improving collection efficiency
  • AI-powered merchant acquisition and onboarding processes
  • Planning to commercialize AI services to third-party customers
  • New non-payment, non-financial services AI revenue streams developing

Strategic Focus and Guidance

  • Aggressive investment in consumer and merchant acquisition with focus on monetizable customers
  • Targeting 15-20% EBITDA margin in near term with confidence in achieving sooner than expected
  • Long-term structural margins expected to be significantly higher than 15-20%
  • Growth acceleration expected to continue across all business segments
  • Focus on wealth management as key growth area
  • Continuing investments in areas that matter despite cost optimization

Management Commentary

  • Vijay Shekhar Sharma emphasized crossing January 2024 metrics across all KPIs
  • Madhur Deora highlighted broad-based growth across nearly every business segment
  • Confidence in continued revenue growth acceleration and margin expansion
  • AI seen as structural margin expander and growth accelerator

Additional Information

  • Company provided earnings materials in .md file format for AI chatbot compatibility
  • Three new independent board directors joined focusing on technology, business, finance and globalization
  • Conference call included participants from major investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi, and others