New Delhi [India], August 26 (ANI): AvenuesAI has entered FY27 with strong operating momentum and a significantly broader growth agenda. Following a year in which gross revenue crossed 8,100 crore, Q1 FY27 operating revenue more than doubled year-on-year to 2,680.4 crore, while profit after tax increased 45% to 84.8 crore.

But management believes the more important story is what comes next.

Having built scale across its payments businesses, AvenuesAI is now focused on translating that scale into higher-value revenue streams. The company has identified three major growth engines for its next phase: expanding CCAvenue in the United States, building Rediff into an integrated consumer and enterprise digital ecosystem, and commercialising transaction intelligence and AI through TISco.

At the same time, the core payments business continues to expand across sectors including utilities, telecom, travel and entertainment, retail and other high-frequency digital-payment categories.

For FY27, management expects consolidated revenue of 11,000-13,000 crore and is targeting EPS of 8.75-9.50, based on the proposed post-corporate-action face value of 10 per share.

In this interaction, Vishwas Patel, CEO and Managing Director of AvenuesAI Limited, discusses why he believes the company is moving from being predominantly a payments infrastructure business towards a broader payments, digital-platform and AI-led technology company.

Q1. AvenuesAI has started FY27 with revenue growth of 109% and PAT growth of 45%. What should investors take away from these numbers?

Vishwas Patel: I think the most important takeaway is that the business is demonstrating its ability to grow at scale.

We spent the last few years strengthening our platforms, expanding transaction volumes and investing in capabilities that we believe can support the next phase of AvenuesAI. We are now beginning to see the benefits of that operating leverage.

Q1 revenue increased 109% year-on-year to 2,680.4 crore and PAT increased 45% to 84.8 crore. This follows FY26, when gross revenue reached 8,116 crore and PAT was 295 crore.

But I would encourage investors not to look at one quarter in isolation. What matters to us is the direction of the business.

Our core payments platforms continue to scale. At the same time, we are investing in businesses that can potentially improve the revenue and margin characteristics of AvenuesAI over time--international payments, enterprise technology, financial services and transaction intelligence.

For FY27, we expect consolidated revenue of approximately 11,000-13,000 crore and EPS of 8.75-9.50 based on the proposed post-corporate-action face value of 10.

So our objective is increasingly straightforward: continue scaling payments, improve monetisation of that scale, and use the cash generation and data capabilities of the core business to build the next generation of AvenuesAI.

Q2. What are the biggest growth opportunities you see over the next three years?

There are three that we are particularly focused on: international payments, Rediff and transaction intelligence through AI.

The first is CCAvenue's expansion into the United States. We have spent years building payment infrastructure and servicing complex digital-payment requirements. The US gives us an opportunity to take those capabilities into a much larger market with significantly different transaction economics.

The second is Rediff.

Our ambition is to build Rediff into a much broader digital ecosystem rather than view it simply through its legacy businesses.

On the consumer side, we see opportunities around content, RediffPay as a UPI-led payments offering and RediffTV as a non-linear video and streaming platform.

On the enterprise side, RediffOne is being developed as an integrated technology and productivity ecosystem. Email, commerce and payments provide the initial foundation, with the opportunity over time to build out ERP, CRM, HRMS and other enterprise productivity applications under a unified RediffOne proposition.

The third opportunity is AI and transaction intelligence.

AvenuesAI participates in a very large number of transactions. Historically, the primary value came from processing those transactions. We believe AI creates an opportunity to derive intelligence from consented transaction data and convert that intelligence into products.

TISco--the AvenuesAI Transaction Intelligence Score--is an important first step in that direction.

If we execute well, these three businesses can progressively broaden AvenuesAI from payments infrastructure into a company operating across payments, enterprise technology, financial intelligence and AI.

Q3. Why is the United States strategically important? Is this simply geographic diversification?

No. We see the US opportunity as both geographic expansion and an opportunity to improve the economics of our international payments business.

India remains an extremely important market for us and continues to provide scale. But payment economics vary considerably between markets.

Our strategy in India is to continue broadening the merchant ecosystem and deepen our participation across key payment categories. Internationally, particularly in the US, we intend to be more selective and initially focus on larger enterprise opportunities where our technology and payment-processing capabilities can be differentiated.

Our objective is for international operations to contribute approximately 12-15% of payment net revenue by FY28.

That is important because it creates another earnings engine for AvenuesAI--one with different pricing economics and dollar-denominated revenue.

We will initially enter as a payment-gateway player and progressively expand the offering as we establish our presence.

Q4. Payments companies traditionally grow by processing more transactions. Are you trying to change that model?

Absolutely.

Processing more transactions remains important, but the strategic question is: how much value can we create around each transaction and each merchant relationship?

That is why we increasingly look at net revenue alongside gross revenue.

Gross revenue can change significantly depending upon business mix. Net revenue gives investors a better indication of the underlying economics of the businesses we are building.

The next phase is therefore not simply about increasing payment volume. It is about creating additional monetisation layers around our existing platforms.

International payments are one example. Financial services are another. Enterprise technology through RediffOne creates another opportunity. And ultimately, AI allows us to explore whether consented transaction information itself can become the foundation for new intelligence products.

That is the transition we are working towards: from transaction processing to transaction monetisation and, ultimately, transaction intelligence.

Q5. TISco sounds potentially significant. What exactly are you trying to build?

TISco represents our belief that payment data can potentially tell you much more about a business than whether a transaction succeeded or failed.

With appropriate consent and governance, transaction behaviour can provide signals around business activity, consistency, seasonality and financial behaviour.

The objective of TISco is to explore how those signals, combined with other consented datasets, can be transformed using AI into an explainable transaction-intelligence framework.

One potential application is credit assessment, particularly for businesses where conventional financial information may provide only part of the picture.

This is also why we are integrating our AI capabilities more closely into AvenuesAI. Nueromind is already wholly owned by us, and bringing the team and technology directly into the parent should allow payments, data and AI capabilities to work much more closely together.

We don't look at AI as a standalone experiment. The opportunity is to apply AI to the transaction ecosystem we already operate.

If payments created the data layer, we believe AI can potentially create the intelligence layer.

Q6. Where does Rediff fit into this? What can Rediff become that it isn't today?

We see Rediff as an opportunity to build both a consumer digital ecosystem and an enterprise technology platform on top of a highly recognised Indian internet brand.

The important point is that Rediff does not need to remain defined by its historical businesses.

On the consumer side, content and email provide an existing foundation. We can complement that with RediffPay, RediffTV and other digital services.

The enterprise opportunity is particularly interesting.

Through RediffOne, our objective is to bring together enterprise email, commerce and payments and progressively add productivity applications such as CRM, ERP and HRMS.

Think of the long-term proposition as one integrated technology relationship with an enterprise rather than multiple disconnected products.

AvenuesAI contributes payments, commerce and AI capabilities. Rediff contributes the brand, users, enterprise relationships and existing technology businesses. Bringing these capabilities together gives us the opportunity to build something considerably larger than either platform independently.

Q7. Investors will naturally ask when these investments start translating into margins.

That's a fair question.

We are already seeing expense efficiencies in the existing business, but we are simultaneously investing in international expansion, AI infrastructure and new financial-services capabilities.

Therefore, we are not managing the business to maximise the margin of any individual quarter.

We are trying to create a structurally stronger margin profile as these investments begin generating revenue through FY27 and FY28.

There is an important discipline around this.

The core payments business remains profitable and we expect it to continue generating operating accruals. We selectively reinvest part of those accruals into businesses where we see a significant long-term opportunity.

At the same time, we have an internal EPS guardrail around reinvestment. Growth cannot become an excuse for ignoring shareholder returns.

Our philosophy is:

grow the core generate incremental cash invest selectively create new revenue streams compound earnings.

That is the model we want investors to judge us on.

Q8. If you had to describe the AvenuesAI investment thesis in one answer, what would it be?

AvenuesAI today has a scaled and profitable payments foundation. What we are now building on top of that foundation is potentially much more interesting.

We have an Indian payments business with significant scale. We are taking CCAvenue into a large international market with different transaction economics. We are repositioning Rediff as a consumer and enterprise technology ecosystem. And we are beginning to use AI to convert consented transaction data into intelligence through initiatives such as TISco.

Importantly, we intend to fund this transition with discipline rather than pursue growth irrespective of profitability.

So I would describe the opportunity as a progression:

Payments gave us scale.

Scale created data.

AI can turn that data into intelligence.

And intelligence can create entirely new revenue streams.

Our job over the next several years is to execute that transition while continuing to compound the earnings power of the underlying business. (ANI)