Health premium surged 65%→60%→79%→68% YoY through four quarters.

And in terms of steady-state growth, what could be the growth one could think about?

We always guide about 30%, we always beat that guidance.

Third question, Yashish, is on the growth and the new opportunities. When you think about growth and new opportunities, what are some of the areas of investments, either in the current business or adjacencies we are looking? And PB Health clearly is in the market to look to raise money. Is PB Fintech looking to invest in the next round?

So, on both of them, today, we are not exploring, either as a board, or I can tell you as a Management, any other growth opportunity. We have not come across any in the last 3 months? And we are not actively looking at anything, and we have not even discussed anything. Number two, you asked about PB Health. Yes, PB Health is going to be raising capital. They will be close to that. They have not come to PB Fintech to raise capital yet.

Last question - any incremental discussion on any cap on commissions or tighter commission regulation?

No, no, there's news flow even today. The media is much more active than either the regulator or the insurance industry. So, nobody else knows, only the media knows. There are two different conversations that go on. One conversation that's been on in the life insurance industry is about some form of deferred revenues. We don't want to participate in that debate. We are very positive about it. The second conversation that goes on is some kind of lower EOM structure, in the health insurance industry. Once more, we welcome it. The remaining conversations that you hear, we only hear from the media, honestly. We actually don't hear it from the regulator.

Has Paisabazaar turned around on EBITDA? Is it a positive?

Paisabazaar, on an operating basis, is positive on EBITDA this quarter, and honestly, internally at least, we expect it to be significantly positive next year, so we actually expect quite a strong year from Paisabazaar.

In Paisabazaar, the fixed cost base is roughly ₹200 Cr +/-, but the revenues have been facing some downward pressure, whether it's credit card issuances, or even the take rates in unsecured. Where do you see that delta coming from?

See, you rightly mentioned the number. So, the cost numbers are roughly similar. They've stabilized, and I think what we will see, this year is operating leverage because of that. The fixed cost option will be better, and as we scale, the PAT margins will emerge. That's what we're expecting in this financial year. We are starting a few new initiatives, but those will not add to incremental costs, so I don't see the cost side increasing too much.

Is the renewal revenue improving in Paisa, or that continues to struggle a little bit because of what has happened in cards?

Largely, Paisa is an origination revenue, its renewal revenue is not too significant. We are moving away. We are more and more focused on upfront payments rather than renewal revenue. However, as we move towards the savings business, some of it will appear, but honestly, from a revenue perspective, you're probably talking not the next 2 years, from a renewal revenue of that.

On the phygital leg of the business on the core insurance side, in terms of you deploying manpower in 200-plus cities. In terms of capacity that you have currently to service, and the product mix or margin profile, how do you look at phygital versus core online business?

So, again, just to be very clear, Dipanjan, the person comes to our platform, and either the same person who is speaking to them on the phone, goes to visit them, or they pass on. The journey is exactly the same, it's just the fulfilment, which is physical. It's about 25% right now of our savings, term, and health business. It has been growing quite rapidly, but so has the rest of the business. The economics of the business are actually very, very good, because the lead cost is the same. Now we're getting extra conversion from that lead. That conversion comes at a very high contribution margin. The biggest challenge that we have been working on from day one is the quality of business - claim settlement rates, loss ratios, persistency and renewal rate. These are at all-time highs right now.

On Paisabazaar's strategy and PB Connect, the physical leg of the lending business - the volumes were quite low compared to last quarter. Is there any change in strategy on that business?

Paisabazaar has about 5.8 Cr consumers that it has acquired till date and that almost represents 50% of the active credit Indians in India. We are transitioning into becoming a more engagement platform than a one-time origination platform. To do the savings business, we wanted both bonds and mutual funds. The stock broking license is a prerequisite for acquiring a bond license. On the mutual fund side, instead of moving to a monthly SIP format, we are bringing in a daily SIP format. On PB Connect, we had two kinds of businesses - retail micro-agents and wholesale. We have decided to stop the wholesale business because we don't see any strategic value. That's why you have seen a decline in the revenue. It has no impact on the overall profits.

On the Policybazaar side - how are the customers that you're getting post-September different to the ones before that? Is there a ticket size difference, is there a product or the kind of policies that they're taking?

Supratim, as you can imagine, the customers are roughly the same, but what has changed is the fact that, one, there was a lot of exposure to people about term insurance and health insurance, because there was a lot of discussion during the GST time. However, what has happened post-GST is that in health insurance, people are buying higher sum insured than they were buying earlier. Now a vast majority of policies are being bought which are ₹10 lakhs and above in terms of sum insured. There have also been a couple of insurers who have launched unlimited sum-insured products. On the term side, the change has been, because the customer is seeing a 18% reduction (prices have not changed on both health and term insurance), people are buying a little bit more of the riders. Things like a critical illness rider, the attachment of that has gone up; some of the accidental protection riders, their attachment has gone up. But both of these changes are dwarfed by a different change, which is the fact that our conversion rate has gone up.

On POSP platform - you have indicated that you are going for more granular, smaller agents. What is the proportion of these smaller agents, be it in form of number of agents or contribution to premiums? And what was it, maybe one year back, or two years back?

Sarbvir obviously has this data we just looked at yesterday. 99.5% of the agents make less than about ₹20 lakh revenue in a year from us. Only 350 agents or so make more than that. In terms of premium, 83% of the premium comes from the small agents now. If you look at the same number a year ago, that would have been close to 50-50 in terms of premium. So, our growth is despite the fact that we're cutting out a lot of the other part, and it's actually reducing year-on-year, but it's gone from about 50-50 to about 80-20 in terms of premium. But in terms of agents, 99%+.

On Paisa - as we are mentioning that there's lot of growth which we're expecting, are we also deploying more resources, and that could lead to somewhat higher expenses as well? Or are the cost base totally intact, and only we can get operating leverage from here?

I think we'll see a lot of operating leverage, this year. The costs have stabilized, and the absorption of that will be much better. As we improve scale, a lot of supply work has happened. Our conversions are going up; people are seeing more offers that can translate into actual disbursals. So those rates have significantly improved, and hence the scale will improve. From a cost perspective, it should be roughly similar this year. Compared to last year in terms of quality of business, productivity of employees, we are supremely high right now. We are at a point where we're not expanding employees for some time, and we think there is some leverage left. Maybe about 30% or so is something that we can get with the current employee base.

The last bit - secured disbursements have meaningfully dropped. It's a change of strategy, or the take rates are not favourable, so we are kind of pushing back on this?

No, they have only dropped in one area, which was wholesale POSP distribution, which we were doing for one supplier. Look, it was not making strategic sense. We've decided not to continue that business. We stopped it in January. It takes 15 days to stop the business, after that, we are not doing that business. It was a meaningful part of the home loans part of the Paisa revenue. That's fine. It was kind of fluffy revenue in the sense it didn't really have profits; it would never make massive profits. So, wholesale POSP is what we've stopped. Everything else is up.

Couple of strategic questions. Capital allocation - are we in a position to comment on use of money lying on the balance sheet and the accruals we are expecting? And on PB Health - can you give an update on what operationally is happening on the ground? I thought the investment last year was going to be a one-time investment, so if we are looking at a follow-on round as well, would be good to know what is happening on that business.

So, there are multiple layers to PB Health, but let's go with the hospital part. We've acquired one hospital, which is an operating hospital, makes about ₹20-30 Cr of profit in a year, does about ₹150 Cr of revenue. So that's operational and running in Noida. Our next hospital is to go live in the next few weeks. By this month end, it should be operational. That's in Central Gurugram. We are getting into another hospital in Gurgaon. There's another one we're looking in Delhi, and we've also started looking outside of Delhi. On the second hand, there is something called PB Care+, which is a network. That preferred network is about 500 hospitals strong. PB Health has no immediate requirement of cash. They have not even used 30% of the cash they had. But they are in conversations to raise capital, they are in late-stage conversations, and should they come to PB Fintech, PB Fintech will consider it.

Can you give some update on what happened, and how did the UAE business fare this quarter, and is there a particular outlook on this business?

I'm amazed by those guys. If you really think about it, the bombing started kind of on 28th of Feb. March should have been a washout month for them. Then about 5 days in, AWS got knocked out and we were on AWS. So, just imagine this scenario. 10 days, we had the ability to do zero bookings. Our entire system is down. And they review the thing, and they say we are 3% year-on-year up. I was thinking that the competitor would have taken everything from them, because the competitor was not on AWS. And the competitor's not as much up. We somehow are very, very driven, and we have deep ownership in the company. I think in bad times we'll perform okay; in great times, we'll really shine. For the quarter, they are actually 10% or 12% up. Obviously, Jan, Feb, they were growing beautifully.

On health insurance - phenomenal growth journey, growing for so many quarters at 60%+. Apart from new customers and sum insured increases, has long-term policy also picked up momentum? Is 30% growth on that high base still achievable?

For us, long-term policy proportion of our premium has remained very stable between last year and this year. What has changed, however, is that some of the people are buying 4 - or 5-year policy. Traditionally, in health insurance, the highest term used to be 3 years. Now, we have 4 - and 5-year policies, so that proportion has increased, but the overall proportion of people buying long-term policies, or the premium on multi-year policy has not changed very much. There is no tricks in the business growth that we have achieved, because it's been going on for 3 years now. No one can say whether it will remain at this rate for next year or not. The thing to focus on is the fundamentals - segmentation of customers, products for those appropriate products priced correctly, well-trained sales team using GenAI, and the service and claims experience. The service and claims experience is the keys to a kingdom. Next year growth; no problem.

On the claims bit - the physical support that you offer on claims, people on the ground in hospitals, helping customers settle the claims. What is the kind of penetration in the country today, and how do you see that increasing over the next few years?

Prayesh, we are at 250+ cities. This 250+ may go up a little bit, but that's not really the story anymore. The story now is actually shifting towards the PB Care+ that Yashish mentioned, where there is the preferred network, and if you go to that network, you will get preferential treatment. The cataract example - because it's a planned procedure, the customer is taken straight to their room. The procedure is done. There will be a PB person in that hospital. So, combination of technology and operations, and the experience will be at next level. Today, if you have the Policybazaar app, you can consult a doctor 24/7. So we have worked with all our insurance partners to offer this service. The whole story is changing from just physical presence in cities to presence in hospitals, and giving amazing experience to the customer.

Second question - PB Corporate Business grew 140-odd percentage, which you highlighted in the slide. Is it a one-off, or you think you are going to scale this business meaningfully faster? And UAE is profitable. How do you see PB Corporate to play out from a profitability point of view?

PBFP's growth looks very high because we are still small. We are the fastest growing corporate broker, but we are still small. We had a great Q4 on the corporate side. We won some very prestigious accounts which were with other brokers, especially in the banking and financial space. We've come from zero and we are now in the top 8 brokers in the country. We will invest in this. We are barely hiring from outside, it's mostly internally built. Yes, it does make a small amount of loss, which is perfectly fine. This can be significantly more profitable than the POSP business. But, as I said, that's not the immediate focus. Our immediate focus is growth and quality. Growth, quality, profits - this leg will just follow along.