Ramkumar Krishnamachari, the CFO of JustDial, a leading telephonic search company, was recently in conversation with ET Now, where he spoke about the flat growth rates of his company along with his aspirations that company would soon recover a double digit growth rate.
He said
It is going to take three or four quarter for the sales growth to happen but we believe that we have the necessary foundation.
The very first subject of discussion was JustDial’s flat quarter-to-quarter revenue growth and the efforts it has taken to support the EBITDA post demonetization. Krishnamachari responded by telling that the period of demonetization did have a little impact on the firm, however, no post demonetization effects have been observed until now.
He is also positive that the business is back to normal and all the company has to do is focus on execution, sales expansion, productivity and bringing efficiency, and all this may reflect positively in Q4 results.
However,JustDial is still inclined towards attaining a double digit growth rate mark.
But our belief, our focus is on growth making sure that we get back to the double digit growth and that is our immediate focus and you will see that all our effort will be there to ensure that we get back the top line growth to double digit and that is our focus area and that as far as FY17 is concerned.
Krishnamachari was asked to narrow down the figures of his previously stated “double digit growth,” he responded telling that he does not want to “pin any certain number as far as top line growth is concerned.”
Speaking on the topic of widening his ad campaign to the entertainment networks, which is confined only to the news channels for now, the CFO said he has already stacked out 100 crore Rupees for the ad campaigns for Search Plus, and he is still committed to that plan. He mentioned that the next phase of the advertisement campaign will be aired very soon, and the earlier mentioned 100 crores will be spent in the coming three-four quarters itself, so that convincing results are obtained ASAP.
Again, on the subject of EBITDA margins, Krishnamachari stressed on the fact that the margins will be relying on how quickly the company achieves the double digit growth rate, albeit, some 20% revenue growth rate would be enough to provide them with around 25% to 30% EBITDA margin. However, the first priority of the company is to get the sales rate back on track, and for that, they are ready to compromise on margins for the next few weeks. User engagement is still the most important phenomenon for the company in order to quickly begin with monetization.
He states that the company may have to wait for three or four more quarters before the sales growth actually begin to show, however, they have all the required “tailwind” to strike the double digit growth.
