Startup Deep Dive : Justdial — how a local-search pioneer came to earn a quarter of its income from treasury

Just Dial earns its living selling advertising to small businesses, yet in the year to March 2025 nearly one rupee in four of its money did not come from advertising at all. Of total income of ₹1,528.47 crore ($159.2 million, at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) that the company reported for FY25, only ₹1,141.93 crore was revenue from operations; the remaining roughly ₹386 crore was other income, mostly the return on a cash and investments pile of ₹5,278.6 crore parked in bonds and deposits.

That gap is the most honest way to describe what Just Dial has become. It is still India’s best-known local-search platform, the number you once dialled to find a plumber, and it is also, on the evidence of its own accounts, part investment portfolio. Both descriptions are true at once, and the tension between them runs through the company’s whole story, from a five-person office in Mumbai in 1996 to sole control by Reliance Retail in 2021.

Quick facts

What they do

Just Dial runs a local-search platform. A person looking for a dentist, an air-conditioner repairman, a caterer or a wholesaler can search on justdial.com, the Just Dial app, over the telephone, or by text, and get a list of businesses that match. Search is free for the user. The businesses on the other side are the customers: they pay Just Dial to be listed prominently, to run what the company calls “paid campaigns,” and to be surfaced when a nearby user searches their category. On top of that core local-search business, Just Dial operates JD Mart, a business-to-business marketplace launched in early 2021 where manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors publish digital product catalogues to reach other businesses. As of 31 March 2025 the platform carried 54.7 million active listings, up 12.1% year on year, and 631,530 active paid campaigns, up 3%, according to the company’s Q4 FY25 disclosures.

The origin

V. S. S. Mani did not arrive at Just Dial in one leap. He started in the information-directory trade in 1987 as a salesman for United Database India, a yellow-pages company, which is where he saw both the value of a business directory and the limits of a paper one. In 1989 he co-founded AskMe, a phone-based directory venture in Delhi, which failed; in the India of that era, too few people had telephones and call rates were high, so the market simply was not there yet. Several other attempts through the early 1990s did not work either. The insight that finally stuck was a bet on timing: as India liberalised its telecom rules and phone lines spread, a service that let anyone call a single number and ask a human for a local business would suddenly have an audience. In 1996 Mani started Just Dial in Mumbai with about ₹50,000, a small rented office in Malad, borrowed furniture and five employees, per accounts of the founding retold across startup profiles. The service was voice-first for its first decade; the website justdial.com came only in 2007, as internet and mobile use began to grow. The founding idea, in one line, was to replace the printed directory with a live one you could query in real time.

The struggle years

Just Dial’s hardest years came after it was already public, not before. The company listed in June 2013 to strong demand, but the business model that made it a market darling, selling search advertising to small firms, began to slow within two years. In the quarter to December 2015 (Q3 FY16) net profit fell 16% year on year to ₹26.99 crore and revenue grew only about 11% to ₹171 crore, the slowest growth since its listing, as the pace of new paid campaigns cooled. The market reaction was brutal. In early 2016 the stock touched a lifetime low of about ₹493, dropping below even the ₹530 price at which qualified institutions had bought into the 2013 IPO. The deeper problem was structural, not cyclical: a horizontal “search for anything local” service was being squeezed from two sides at once, by Google’s own search and maps on one flank and by vertical apps that owned single categories, food delivery, home services, travel, on the other. In 2017 there was open speculation that Google was in talks to buy Just Dial; the company publicly clarified that there was no such proposal. For a business whose whole pitch was being the front door to local commerce, watching that front door move to other people’s apps was the existential threat of the decade, and the share price spent years reflecting it.

The turning point

The clear before-and-after event is the Reliance Retail takeover of 2021. Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL), the holding company for Reliance Industries’ retail businesses, announced on 16 July 2021 that it would acquire a controlling stake in Just Dial for ₹3,497 crore, a deal that, including an open offer to public shareholders of up to 26%, was reported to take its total stake to 66.95% and could reach roughly ₹5,719 crore in all (Business Today and Business Standard, July 2021; TechCrunch valued the controlling-stake deal at about $469 million). The mechanics were confirmed in Reliance’s own release: on 20 July 2021 RRVL bought 1.31 crore shares from founder V. S. S. Mani at ₹1,020 each (15.63% of the enlarged capital), and on 1 September 2021 Just Dial issued RRVL 2.12 crore new shares by preferential allotment at ₹1,022.25 each (a further 25.35%). RRVL took sole control on 1 September 2021, then holding 40.98%, per its media release of 2 September 2021. The change of owner coincided with a sharp recovery in the numbers: consolidated net profit climbed from ₹162.72 crore in FY23 to ₹584.2 crore in FY25, and the balance sheet ended FY25 with ₹5,278.6 crore in cash and investments, a war chest few companies of Just Dial’s revenue size carry.

The money behind it

Just Dial’s funding history is unusual in that its defining event was a public-market listing followed by a strategic buyout, rather than a long private venture ladder. The milestones that shaped it:

• IPO, June 2013: priced at ₹530 per share (band ₹470–543), the issue raised about ₹919 crore and was oversubscribed 11.63 times; retail investors were offered a discount at ₹483, and shares listed on BSE, NSE and MCX-SX on 5 June 2013 (Business Today; Chittorgarh IPO data, 2013).
• Anchor book, 2013: Just Dial raised about ₹208 crore from anchor investors including Goldman Sachs and HSBC ahead of the IPO (Business Today, May 2013).
• Reliance Retail Ventures, 2021: the strategic buyer that changed the ownership. It paid ₹1,020 a share to the founder and ₹1,022.25 a share for a fresh preferential allotment, taking sole control on 1 September 2021 at a 40.98% holding (Reliance media release, September 2021).
• Reliance ecosystem, since 2021: the strategic logic named at the deal, per Business Standard and YourStory (July 2021), was access to Just Dial’s merchant database of tens of millions of listings to feed Reliance’s own retail and commerce ambitions.

RRVL later pared its holding by about 2% to comply with minimum public shareholding norms, per Business Standard reporting.

How it makes money

The business model has two engines, one operating and one financial:

• Paid campaigns and listings (the operating engine): businesses pay for visibility on Just Dial’s platforms. FY25 revenue from operations was ₹1,141.93 crore, up 9.5% year on year, carried by 631,530 active paid campaigns as of 31 March 2025 (company results, April 2025).
• JD Mart B2B: a marketplace for manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors to list catalogues and find buyers, launched in early 2021 to compete with IndiaMART and Udaan (Inc42 and MediaNama, 2021).
• Treasury / other income (the financial engine): Just Dial holds ₹5,278.6 crore in cash and investments (as of 31 March 2025) and earns interest and investment gains on it. The gap between FY25 total income of ₹1,528.47 crore and operating revenue of ₹1,141.93 crore, roughly ₹386 crore, is largely this other income.

Costs are dominated by sales and people: Just Dial’s revenue depends on a large field sales force signing up and renewing small-business advertisers, which is why operating margins are thinner than the headline profit suggests. Reported EBITDA for FY25 was ₹335.4 crore, up 54.9% year on year (company results, April 2025), well below the ₹584.2 crore net profit, precisely because so much of the bottom line is treasury income rather than operating profit.

The numbers

Consolidated figures, in ₹ crore:

Two things stand out. Revenue growth has slowed sharply, from about 23% between FY23 and FY24 to 9.5% between FY24 and FY25, even as profit kept rising fast. That is because the profit line has been increasingly powered by other income: it was ₹142 crore in FY23 and ₹305 crore in FY24 (Screener consolidated data), on the way to roughly ₹386 crore in FY25. In other words, net profit tripled over three years while operating revenue grew about 35%.

Where the money comes from

• Operating revenue: ₹1,141.93 crore in FY25, essentially all of it paid advertising and listings sold to businesses across India (company results, April 2025).
• Other/treasury income: about ₹386 crore in FY25, derived from the gap between total income of ₹1,528.47 crore and operating revenue; the return on a ₹5,278.6 crore cash-and-investments book (company results, April 2025).
• Usage base: 54.7 million active listings and 182.4 million quarterly unique visitors as of the quarter to March 2025, the latter down 4.7% year on year (company Q4 FY25 disclosures).

The surprise is in that last line read against the first two. A company whose entire value proposition is traffic, people coming to search, saw quarterly unique visitors fall 4.7% year on year even as it grew listings and profit. And a company that sells advertising now earns roughly a quarter of its total income from a bond and deposit portfolio. The health of Just Dial’s actual product and the health of its reported profit have partly decoupled, which is exactly why the next quarter’s results can swing on interest rates rather than on how many plumbers signed up.

The risks

• Treasury dependence: with roughly ₹386 crore of FY25 total income coming from investments, profit is sensitive to bond markets. In Q2 FY26 (quarter to September 2025) other income fell 35.5% year on year to ₹73.3 crore as bond yields rose, and net profit dropped 22% to ₹119 crore (Business Standard, October 2025). A search-advertising company should not have its profit set by yield curves, yet partly it does.
• Shrinking top of funnel: quarterly unique visitors fell 4.7% year on year to 182.4 million in Q4 FY25. Horizontal local search is being disintermediated by Google Search and Maps and by category-specific apps for food, home services and travel, the structural squeeze that already hollowed out the stock between 2016 and 2019.
• Competitive B2B bet: JD Mart is chasing an entrenched IndiaMART in B2B listings; IndiaMART filed an intellectual-property suit against the platform in November 2020 (Inc42, 2021), a reminder that the newer growth avenue is contested.
• Ownership overhang: Reliance Retail Ventures controls the company with about a 40% stake, and had to sell roughly 2% to meet minimum public shareholding norms (Business Standard); the small public float and single dominant owner shape both liquidity and strategy for minority holders.

The takeaway

The lesson that outlasts Just Dial is about reading a rising profit line before you cheer it. Here is a company whose net profit tripled in three years, from ₹162.72 crore in FY23 to ₹584.2 crore in FY25, while its actual product, measured in unique visitors, was flat to shrinking. The profit was real, but a growing share of it came from what the company did with its cash rather than from what it sold. When you see profit growing much faster than revenue, the useful question is not “how profitable is it” but “profitable from what.” A treasury book can flatter an income statement for years; it cannot, on its own, fix a product that fewer people are visiting. Separate the two before you decide which trend you are actually betting on.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Just Dial?

Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, the retail holding company of Reliance Industries, took sole control of Just Dial on 1 September 2021, then holding 40.98%. Founder V. S. S. Mani remains Managing Director and CEO. RRVL later trimmed its stake by about 2% to comply with minimum public shareholding rules.

How much did Reliance pay for Just Dial?

Reliance Retail announced on 16 July 2021 that it would buy a controlling stake for ₹3,497 crore, a transaction that, including an open offer of up to 26% to public shareholders, was reported to raise its total holding toward 66.95% and could reach about ₹5,719 crore in all (Business Today and Business Standard, July 2021). TechCrunch valued the controlling-stake deal at roughly $469 million.

Is Just Dial profitable?

Yes. It reported consolidated net profit of ₹584.2 crore for FY25 (year ended March 2025), up 61% from ₹362.93 crore in FY24, on revenue from operations of ₹1,141.93 crore. A significant part of that profit, however, comes from other/treasury income on its ₹5,278.6 crore cash-and-investments book, not from advertising alone.

When did Just Dial launch and go public?

V. S. S. Mani started Just Dial as a phone-based local-search service in Mumbai in 1996; the website justdial.com launched in 2007. The company listed on BSE, NSE and MCX-SX on 5 June 2013, after an IPO priced at ₹530 per share that raised about ₹919 crore.

What is JD Mart?

JD Mart is Just Dial’s business-to-business marketplace, launched in early 2021, where manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors publish digital catalogues to reach other businesses. It competes with IndiaMART and Udaan, and was the subject of an intellectual-property suit filed by IndiaMART in November 2020.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Business Standard, “Just Dial FY25 net profit up 61% to Rs 584 crore, revenue rises 9.5%,” April 2025
• Business Standard, “Just Dial jumps after Q4 PAT climbs 36% YoY to Rs 158 cr,” April 2025
• Business Standard, “Just Dial Q2 FY26 results: Net profit declines 22% to ₹119 crore,” October 2025
• BW Businessworld, “Just Dial Net Profit Surges 61% To Rs 584 Cr In FY25,” April 2025
• Outlook Business, “Just Dial FY25 net profit up 61% to Rs 584 crore; revenue rises 9.5%,” April 2025
• Screener.in, Just Dial Ltd consolidated financials (FY23, FY24) and market capitalisation, September 2026
• Business Today, “Local search engine Justdial IPO oversubscribed 11.63 times,” May 2013
• Chittorgarh, “Just Dial IPO date, price and details,” 2013
• Business Standard, “Just Dial hits lifetime low, slips below QIB issue price,” February 2016
• Business Today, “Reliance Retail to acquire 66.95% stake in Justdial for Rs 3,497 cr,” July 2021
• Business Standard, “Reliance Retail buys controlling stake in Just Dial for Rs 5.7k crore,” July 2021
• TechCrunch, “Reliance Retail acquires controlling stake in Just Dial for $469 million,” July 2021
• Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, media release, “RRVL acquires sole control of Just Dial Limited on September 1, 2021,” September 2021
• Inc42, “JustDial launches B2B ecommerce platform JD Mart to take on Udaan, IndiaMART,” 2021
• MediaNama, “Justdial to launch B2B sellers platform JD Mart soon,” February 2021
• StartupTalky, “V. S. S. Mani success story,” accessed September 2026
• Wikipedia, “Justdial,” accessed September 2026

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