Urban Company Limited (URBANCO) Earnings Call Transcript
October 16, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Urban Company Limited's Q2 FY 2027 Earnings Conference Call. We have Mr. Abhiraj Singh Bhal, CEO and Co-Founder; and Mr. Abhay Mathur, Chief Financial Officer from the Urban company management team on the call today. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded, and the audio call and the transcript will be available on the company's website. Additionally, please note that this earnings call is scheduled for a duration of 45 minutes. [Operator Instructions] Our results and shareholder letters have been published to the exchanges and uploaded on the company's IR website. Before we begin the call, I would like to remind all the attendees that some statements or comments made on the call today by the management can be deemed as forward-looking and hence, may involve certain risks and uncertainties. Such statements or comments are not guarantees of future performance, and the actual results may differ. Over to Mr. Abhiraj Singh Bhal for the opening remarks.
Thank you, Bhavya. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Urban Company's Q2 FY '27 Earnings Call. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now completed one full year as a listed company, and 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 INR 1,432.3 crores. And revenue from operations grew 41.4% year-on-year to reach INR 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 INR 144 crores, but this reflected INR 174 crore investment in InstaHelp. Excluding InstaHelp, adjusted EBITDA was INR 30 crores positive, up 213% year-on-year. For the purposes of this call, we will share 3 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 ATV has grown by almost 40% for 3 straight quarters, well ahead of our pre-listing trend. That growth comes from faster new user acquisition, which has built up [Indiscernible] over this period. Better repeat behavior, which keeps us compounding and densification of our micro markets that make our services faster, cheaper and better. India Consumer Services, our core business grew by [Indiscernible] 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. So we are 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 low. For our largest categories in our top 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 and all concerns around growth in that market 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. And in the micro markets of InstaHelp, which run alongside our core business, about 45% of all new users to the platform now come through InstaHelp. So 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 INR 30 crores this quarter, up 213% year-on-year at INR 119 crores for the past 3 quarters, up 175% year-on-year. During Q2 FY '27, India Consumer Services saw a marginal 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 and [Indiscernible] loss margin narrowed by 220 basis points year-on-year. Even in InstaHelp where we continue to do 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 INR 346 to INR 279. So that's the second point, which we [Indiscernible] 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 [Indiscernible] 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 INR 1,901 crores of cash and treasury investments on our balance sheet, had a poor business that generated INR 119 crores of adjusted EBITDA over the past 3 quarters. Our businesses now are materially larger than they were at the time listing. Growth has stepped up, and we now operate 3 businesses at scale with proven economics. The proposed raise of up to INR 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 opportunity 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 FY '28. And we are very confident now more than ever before of achieving the INR 1,000 crores adjusted EBITDA goal that we set out for FY '31. With that, we'd be happy to take questions from the analyst community.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Mr. Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley.
I hope I'm audible.
Yes, Gaurav.
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. But 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 -- tax lower in the current quarter at 3%. So anything to read in this number? And the last question is on your foray into the residential AC segment. It will 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, Gaurav, for your questions. Let me start with India core. You're right. The growth has continued to remain very healthy, and it is driven in large part by both new user acquisition as well as our cohorts and [Indiscernible] base compounding well. I think on the new user acquisition side, it's a combination of 3 things, Gaurav. One is, of course, the proposition itself has become stronger for customers with densification, what we are able to do is deliver our services faster under UC Instant. And increasingly now, consumers are able to see in the top 7, 8 cities, services available within the hour and very often within 30 minutes or so. Secondly, we've continued to make meaningful investments in trading, in SOPs, in tooling and quality control via AI. And that compounds the word-of-mouth faster, which is the biggest source of acquisition for us from a new user standpoint. And 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. So I think the underlying proposition has trended, 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. And I think it's a function of Tier 2 users essentially getting these services a wider assortment of services are now available to them. And 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. And finally, we step up on customer marketing as well, and that would have been visible in the India core P&L that we've drawn out. So a combination of all the 3 things has stepped up new users. We are very confident of this trajectory continuing. We see a long [Indiscernible] 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 a 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. And 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 means 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 2 to be more about learning. And mostly from a channel standpoint as well, I think we will limit it largely to our app. So the idea is to learn in the first year or 2 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 into the category. But at the same time, we will 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 are in touching distance of profitability in -- and we would like that to continue that trajectory to continue essentially. So our foray into AC should not materially change that trajectory.
Next question is from the line of Mr. Manish Adukia from Goldman Sachs.
I also have 3 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? And second, when you think about M&A, could these be like bolt-on acquisitions? I mean how are you thinking about the range of scale of what kind of target you may look to acquire? That's my first question.
Yes. Manish, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, the purpose of this fundraise is predominantly to ensure that we have strategic flexibility over the next 5 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 are 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 whole platform for Indian consumers, almost the operating system for the Indian home. So 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 [Indiscernible] each of them play a distinctly important role. And we think that this fund raise, which is up to INR 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. And if there is an attractive opportunity at the right valuation that we believe can be meaningfully additive to the company and create long-term shareholder value. We are very much open to doing that. So that, I think, is our current thought process.
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 your the only player that is out there. You're a multi-category platform. Like -- could there be any possibility of acquisition in that? Or I'm trying to think that what might you need through M&A in your core services where you already have multi categories. So 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?
Yes. So it's a good question. And I think maybe I will flip the question 1 level higher and answer at a more sort of framework level. So I think the framework we will use is either an M&A should allow us to consolidate a particular market that we all find ourselves in or it should allow us to enter a new category/market. And 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 providing things are from a valuation standpoint, accretive. So I would say that's the sort of broad framework that we would look at. We look at a similar framework within our other lines of businesses as well.
Very clear. My second question, of course, 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 2 or 3 quarters ago, the competitive intensity probably has remained elevated for a prolonged period of time. But despite that, like I 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 on that side, you still remain confident of delivering breakeven at a company level? Or you think how things evolve InstaHelp in the next 1 or 2 quarters will actually determine whether you get there or not? Or just trying to get a sense is despite that, could you still lever a breakeven if formation remains high in InstaHelp.
Yes. So Manish, I think why we remain confident on achieving the Q3 FY '28 breakeven goal at a consolidated level is a function of 2 things. One, I think the growth trajectory and the operating leverage that, that growth brings to our 3 main businesses, India core, international and native is strong, and 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. So that gives us 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. And since the beginning of this year, we have been executing on a certain plan with deliberation and that plan, we have drawn out pretty much over the way for the next 6 to 8 quarters. Now you're obviously in a competitive environment, reacting tactically, to ongoing situations. But 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. So we have a certain plan in place. We are executing on that plan, and we believe that, that plan will fructify into both costs achieving the targets that we set out to achieve as well as cementing our leadership position in InstaHelp.
Very clear. And 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 1 to 2 years would be like a learning phase. But 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 growth perspective, India core, like you said, is accelerating. Tier 2 is seeing good traction there. InstaHelp, is competitive and you're also investing there. International has again accelerated. So 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 are doing well. Why choose a new category to enter into when so many other parts of the business are doing well and may do even better if you continue to invest there. So just trying to understand from a capital allocation waterfall perspective, how does credit take parity? Or where does that fit in terms of amount of allocation that we see.
Yes. So in our view, native is valiantly on track to achieve its profitability goals. I think it will actually happen pretty soon. And that's part of the reason why we think from a timing perspective, it's the right time as well. And our own view of what -- from a capital allocation standpoint, our own view is that we want to be fairly disciplined in the buildup of EC. Like I said, once native is profitable, we want that trajectory to continue [Indiscernible] from that trajectory. In fact, we've mentioned in the letter as well that R&D expenses and native are today in bulk of the EBITDA losses. So from that one can derive where the underlying profitability already is tracking. See, finally, an entry into any new category as a function of one doesn't think about just the next few quarters, but very long term -- takes a long-term view. In the long term, we believe that this is a very attractive category for Native. We do almost 10x more air conditioner servicing, repair and installation orders compared to water purifiers. And the category is also perhaps [Indiscernible] larger in terms of TAM. And there are genuine pian points, which over the last 10, 12 years of building this category from a servicing standpoint, we have seen consumers experience. And we will be very, very calibrated measured, learn, go slow and set this business up for long-term success. I don't think we're looking at any immediate numbers in the first [Indiscernible]. I think it's all about keeping things in a learning phase and thinking about how do we succeed over the next 5, 10 years. From that long-term future perspective, I would say it would -- it is a fairly strong pillar for native.
Really appreciate your responses and insight. All the best.
Our next question is from the line of Mr. Sachin Salgaonkar from Bank of America.
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. So trying to understand what has now changed, which is now leading to dilution to shareholders. I understand from your comments today that competition at InstaHelp has not changed, while it is intense, it has not increased. And I also understand the growth has stepped up and there is an operational leverage, which is coming up on the back of it. But here, when I look at your FY '31 target, it's unchanged, right? So how to think about the capital being raised. Will it be invested for growth and hence, should we see upside to that FY '31 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 our own, the current balance sheet is more or sufficient. And if it was not, we would have changed the short- to medium-term targets, but those remain unchanged. So 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. And 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 INR 1,000 crores by FY '31. And if I'm seeing that out in the earnings call, and obviously, internally, our solutions will be much, much higher.
Yes. 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 a 10-year point of view, where your core consumer business is clearly EBITDA is increasing and there is a guidance of roughly 100 bps improvement in margin every quarter. So clearly, with our accelerated growth as well as things improving, you do see that incremental cash, which is coming. On native, you are 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. So I'm trying to understand that in that context, clearly, you do have that flexibility. So what do you mean by incremental flexibility, what you want? And why now from a capital base point of view?
Yes. 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. So 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 [Indiscernible] significantly larger than we are [Indiscernible] 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. And last question from my side is, when you save or you open for acquisitions, ideally should we also think about a potential acquisition to the InstaHelp category? Where, let's say, the interest rates in U.S. are, it's not easy for anyone to raise incremental capital. With you guys sitting in on that, let's say, a good amount of cash, is that an M&A opportunity you guys are also open to explore?
So I would never say never, but highly unlikely.
Next question is from the line of Mr. Abhishek Pathak from Motilal Oswal.
Congrats on another good quarter. My question is on -- from perspective of supply of experts as well as helps. So 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? And to that effect, if somebody should somebody choose to invest 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? And the second question, again, on the InstaHelp is, do we have a working unit economics steady-state picture that we have in our mind that we are working with that we aim to achieve in the next 2 to 3 years. And I mean I understand it may be a high single-digit EBITDA business, but I mean, in terms of sacrificing those margins for the next 3 to 4 years, do we believe that more interventions would lead to outsized growth? Because the TAM that we have put out still kind of limits the ceiling to which InstaHelp can grow. So like how does investments kind of par into that tool situation?
Yes. So 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 the availability of people and the ability to recruit, train, onboard and retain the right skill talent from a long-term perspective. So people are available. I don't think there's a shortage of that. And especially if the earnings proposition is strong, we've given out our latest update of the earnings index, where you'll see that the earnings proposition on the platform continues to be very strong across Insta and Core. I think people will always join be part of [Indiscernible] workforce, [Indiscernible] 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, et cetera. So there's definitely across the 2 segments. The top of the funnel is not to change. I think the challenge is can you identify the right people who have the customer centricity, the sincerity to work with purpose. We see a long-term pathway of the platform. And then do you invest correctly in the training and onboarding and setting them up for success. And then over their life cycle, are you able to support them with so that they get retained at their earnings grew and their overall ratings and reputation of the platform compounds. I think that's what this whole business is about. And 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 partnership, right? And I think some of these things tend to play out in the medium term. So 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 learnings. So it's less about take rate for services. It's more about absolute earnings. And 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. And we will continue to work harder and harder to ensure that the earnings of 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 then -- and we continue to see if our older micro markets are tracking towards that view. Without getting into many [Indiscernible] of that at the highest level, as I have mentioned in a few earlier calls as well. We will need the pricing to reach roughly about INR 200 an hour, and the net order value to reach roughly about INR 300 given the average order is about 1.5 hours. This is because our view is that even with the best utilization you need about INR 150 an hour of payout for every utilized hour to the gig worker. And then the remaining INR 50 is essentially all your costs if you run a [Indiscernible] an efficient machinery at scale. We think we will get there. We are very confident while the current numbers and the current NOVs declining trajectory may raise some concerns amongst the investor and analyst community. We have enough evidence internally. And if we do it, we wouldn't be [Indiscernible]. We have that evidence, but it will be a long journey, and we will have to be patient and that long journey is by choice for us as a company and also a function of the broader market that we find ourselves. And 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 FY '31. So 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 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. So there is a percentage of these orders, that are for the industry as a whole being bought. And 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 LTV. But with that overall understanding of where the market will be with having operated micro markets which are less competitive at near full price and having seen how those micro markets behave for a longer period of time and extrapolating the number of such micro markets, 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 true 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 and more than its own NTV and its own P&L. It will drive a lot of additional benefit for the [Indiscernible] because if our vision is to go beyond being a home services company into being the preferred own platform, the trusted home platform for India then that home platform cannot exist without a frequency layer. And that frequency lever is InstaHelp. So it's a very fundamental strategic part of that vision, which is why we're investing in building ahead of the curve here.
Just a very quick follow-up on the InstaHelp piece. From our 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 time? And if yes, like which are those categories within InstaHelp that the customers are using the instance services for? And is there an ROI on kind of investing or leaning a bit heavily on these services? So that time kind of expands meaningfully with probably slightly lower investments.
So within the household category, the 2 prominent use cases today are, one, replacement when your house help is not available, and this stretches across both plan and unplanned leaves as well as longer leaves. So 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. And we'll have to wait and watch if that additional help use case expands further. And then there's a segment of younger users, the ones that do not want to commit to sort of full time everyday household coming to their home. They feel that home can be cleaned 2, 3 times a week, 8, 10 times a month, and that's enough and they would want the flexibility to book those on the go whenever they want it. And 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 it's 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 have printed 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 and categories. And we are hopeful to seeing evidence of that, and there is evidence of that playing out. then that will be exciting. From the looks of it, I don't think over the next 3, 4, 5 years, it'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 what -- that's the behavior we see in our other markets, UAE, Saudi and Singapore, all in that behavior. And that's -- fundamentally, that's where the country will eventually get. The question is, will it get there by 2030 or not? I want to reiterate that TAM picture that we drew was for the next 5 years in a 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 year of time could be much more ahead than we are imagining. And we are always open. Our opinions are always strong in the moment, but loosely. And if evidence points, otherwise, there's no reason for us not to acknowledging [Indiscernible].
We'll extend the call by a few minutes to accommodate a few more questions. The next question is by Mr. [Indiscernible] GM Financial.
My first question is related to your Professionals growth in the India consumer services business. What I see is like in the last 2, 3 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 a 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 micro markets or something else? And a related question to that is like should a sharp acceleration in the Professionals growth eventually translate to better growth than what we are even delivering now. Maybe high-teens professionals growth can translate to 30% kind of growth for your India consumer services [Indiscernible]?
This is Abhay, and I'll try and answer that question. So 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%, while as the NTV has grown by 26%. So 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. So that's what we're targeting. And as the business grows, we will onboard supply ahead of demand. This quarter also has some level of onboarding ahead of the festive season. So that's also a factor. But overall, we see gains from utilization as well as adding more active professionals to the platform as the key to [Indiscernible].
So will it be fair to say a way that 25% is something that one should work with growth given the increase we have seen in recent quarters because earlier, the growth -- the professional additions was mid-single-digit kind of numbers.
[Indiscernible] I wouldn't put a specific number to the growth projections for the future as Abhiraj mentioned, the increase in growth has been structural. [Indiscernible] acquisition is growing, retention is improving. And as a factor -- as a function of that, we are adding more professionals. So we'll wait and watch.
Got it. The other question is with respect to your [Indiscernible] services for Consumer Services business, where you're servicing in 30 to 60 minutes. Now do you charge a premium here to the consumers? And if not, will -- not today, maybe later tomorrow, is there any plan on that side? And a related question again to that is like -- do you plan to extend this instant services in UAE, Singapore as well?
So right now, we don't charge any premium. And in the future, we're open. It's not a decision that we've taken right now. It will 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. And just a last one. So obviously, your contribution margin expanded this quarter partly because of lower customer [Indiscernible] refunds those kind of, so my other question is, what [Indiscernible] left for the contribution margin in the India consumer services to improve given that we are already at 22%, thanks.
Yes. [Indiscernible], yes, the contribution margin has actually been showing an increasing trend. And as we explained, it's come from a lot of AL 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 the 9% to 10% adjusted EBITDA will largely be operating leverage. So that's what we will track towards.
So just a related question to that again. And then how short do we look at your -- the fixed cost, basically, since what is happening is like your employee cost has also increased materially over the last few quarters in this business. So where exactly should we see that operating [Indiscernible] start playing out.
So [Indiscernible], yes, the absolute costs have gone up. But if you look at the area in your picture across cost lines, I think other than marketing, we have demonstrated operating leverage across the other lines. And going forward as well, our endeavor is to demonstrate operating leverage across all the 3 lines, which is salaries, marketing and G&A. And as we mentioned in the letter, we would prefer to invest for growth where possible, while improving our margins in a calibrated traction. So that's what you will see play out as we invest in the number of [Indiscernible].
We will take the next question as our final question. This will be from Mr. Srinath Bellwether.
Two set of questions, one on native. I 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 rollout in modern retail? Just wanted to hear your views.
Yes. Srinath I think I would say that the percentage of business that comes from off-line is still very small right now and still very much in the learning phase. The bulk of the business continues to come from e-commerce platforms and our own app. But early response has been good, especially in modern retail. And we are learning. It would take some time for us to understand that we also don't' want to be in a rush. And we want the brand and the product quality to continue to compound and with our new launches, the M3, water purified that has a 3-year [Indiscernible] asked filter life and comprehensive warranty. Truly, in my view, state-of-the-art best water purifier out there and the [Indiscernible]. I think we are seeing pull now over time from the off-line ecosystem as well. And [Indiscernible] be calibrated and slowly in steady build out that ecosystem.
Perfect. My second question is on [Indiscernible] gold. I want to understand how has been the customer feedback? Any qualitative understanding you can share on how this rollout is played or NPS or on broader customer feedback? And second just wanted to understand how many micro markets have we rolled this out? Have you already rolled it out to all key micro markets where we already have density. And 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.
Yes. think gold is, I would say, still early roll out. The early results are very promising. And premiumization is something that we've done across all our core categories as well, whether it's with [Indiscernible] et cetera, et cetera. So we want to do that early in the journey of InstaHelp rather than later and see and learn. I would say it's still in the early phases. We share more with the right time. But just given the dynamics of the category today. I think what I can share is that it's interesting, exciting promise and we certainly had to continue to build on gold and scale it out. You're right. I think we've been hard at work in aggressively onboarding supply in the last 3, 4 months in the round of to festive season and also to improve the liquidity coefficient. We have seen an improvement in the liquidity [Indiscernible]. It helps that demand continues to be strong in many pockets demand is running ahead of supply. But I think in the last quarter, we've made -- taken big strides towards bridging that gap.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take that as a last question for the evening. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Enjoy your evening.
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