Times Internet, the digital arm of the Times Group, saw its revenues jump 24% to Rs 1,625 crore for the financial year ended March 2020, the company said in its annual report released on Thursday. The growth comes as several of its offerings witnessed strong growth over the past year.
Times Internet’s monthly users grew 23% to 557 million for the financial year, while daily active users increased to 111 million. Monthly pageviews also rose to 67 billion in FY20, up 44% from 47 billion in the previous fiscal.
These figures make the company the largest digital network in India, behind only the two tech majors Google and Facebook.
“We reach nearly 8 in 10 Indians, and nearly 7% of the world’s population, every month. Our engagement per user outpaced our user growth, showing continued traction of our underlying assets,” said Satyan Gajwani, vice-chairman, Times Internet in the annual report. “Our aspiration is to reach 1 billion Indians, and become a $1 billion revenue company by 2025.”
Times Internet operates more than three dozen Internet properties, including video streaming service MX Player, music streaming service Gaana, real estate portal Magicbricks, restaurant reservation service Dineout, personal finance app ETMoney, news websites The Times of India, The Economic Times, and Navbharat Times, cricket portal CricBuzz, lifestyle sites Indiatimes, MensXP and iDiva and edtech venture Gradeup among others.
The Times group, which houses TIL, also publishes this paper.
“Last year, we saw a 48% increase in users consuming two or more of our properties each month, and a 120% increase in users consuming three or more of our properties each month,” Gajwani said in the report. MX Player, which has now crossed more than 200 million monthly users, and music platform Gaana which claims to have 185 million monthly users, grew 75% during the year while its news platforms clocked a 31% growth.
Advertising revenues, currently its mainstay for revenue generation, increased 22% during the year. However, the company said it has diversified its revenue streams as it taps avenues like subscription and transaction businesses over the past few years. Both these are now growing faster than the advertising business, the company said.
Times Internet crossed 2 million subscribers last year, registering a 62% growth, led by Times Prime along with other underlying individual subscription products. Transaction businesses saw a 75% increase in net revenue last year, while the annualised GMV grew 68%. Emerging transaction businesses like Dineout, Qureka, and Gradeup clocked a two- to-eightfold growth last year.
“While we saw steep falls from March through June, we’ve rebounded well, with positive growth in July, and we ended August back in positive growth territory for the fiscal year as a whole,” Gajwani said.
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