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Info Edge (India) Ltd

Naukri AI Investment Rises to ₹150 Crore for FY27

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Info Edge (India) Ltd, through its flagship Naukri brand, announced on July 6, 2026 the broad commercial rollout of its AI-powered recruitment solutions — AI-Rex, Talent Pulse, and PremiumX for enterprises, and a suite of AI tools for jobseekers. The press release details a sharp acceleration in client adoption and signals a strategic push beyond listing fees into recruiter productivity and talent intelligence, while disclosing that AI investments will climb from approximately ₹70 crore in FY26 to an estimated ₹150 crore in FY27.

The company runs a portfolio of online marketplaces: Naukri (recruitment), 99acres (real estate), Jeevansathi and Aisle (matchmaking), and Shiksha (education). Its revenue comes mainly from businesses and consumers paying for listing and matching services — employers pay for job postings and resume access, builders and brokers for property listings, and users for matrimony profiles.

What Was Announced

Naukri is now commercially scaling three enterprise‑oriented AI products alongside a growing set of jobseeker‑facing AI features.

AI-Rex — the “agentic” AI platform that automates end-to-end hiring workflows — is live across 4,000+ enterprise customers and recruitment firms (press release). More than 10% of these have already converted to a paid model. The number of hiring mandates flowing through AI-Rex grew 3.7× between February and June 2026, spanning IT, BFSI, Sales, Finance, Healthcare, BPO, and Core Engineering (press release). This represents a significant step-up from late‑May 2026, when management reported “over 1,000 clients onboarded and 30,000 job mandates already on AI‑Rex” and was still relying on a free‑trial model to drive adoption .

Talent Pulse — the AI‑powered talent intelligence platform — now has 600+ paid customers, from large enterprises to smaller organisations (press release). It had already generated ₹30–35 crore of revenue in FY26 and, according to CEO Hitesh Oberoi, is “a business we think we can grow much faster than the overall Naukri business” .

PremiumX — the AI‑driven premium hiring platform — serves 1,800+ enterprise customers, targeting India’s white‑collar professionals earning above ₹25 lakhs annually (press release). It remains free for now, with monetisation planned later.

On the jobseeker side, AI‑powered tools including Neo (career guidance), AI Resume Maker, and AI Mock Interview Prep are now offered under premium subscriptions, contributing to “stronger revenue growth within Naukri’s jobseeker revenue pool” (press release).

Traction Is Building Faster Than Earlier Disclosed

The new numbers show a clear acceleration from the base laid out in Info Edge’s May 2026 earnings call. Back then, AI‑Rex had just crossed the 1,000‑client mark with about 30,000 mandates processed, and the company was still transitioning from a paid pilot to a free‑trial approach . Management described it as “a nascent revenue stream” and “a new offering” about which they were “very excited” but cautious: “we don’t know whether it’ll succeed” . Six weeks later, the client count has quadrupled and a meaningful slice is already paid — suggesting the free‑to‑paid flywheel is beginning to turn.

Talent Pulse, described in May as a slightly older product that did about ₹30–35 crore in FY26, now has a disclosed base of more than 600 paying clients, confirming its evolution into a standalone revenue engine. PremiumX’s 1,800‑client reach, even while free, shows that Naukri is using AI to gain a larger share of the fast‑growing premium hiring market, an ambition Oberoi spelled out in May: “that market … is probably growing faster than the mid‑level, mid‑tier hiring market right now” .

The Runway for Revenue — and the Price Tag

The strategic prize is to move Naukri beyond transaction‑based recruitment listings into a platform that captures a take‑rate on recruiter productivity and talent intelligence. Management’s medium‑term aspiration, articulated in the May call, is to generate “a few hundred crores of incremental revenue from these offerings” over a three‑year period . With Naukri’s core recruitment business delivering standalone full‑year FY26 revenue of ₹2,256 crore, the incremental ambition is material but not transformative in the near term — a point the company itself acknowledges by calling AI‑Rex “both a product innovation and a nascent revenue stream” .

The cost of that ambition is rising. Info Edge invested approximately ₹70 crore in AI during FY26; the estimate for FY27 is ₹150 crore (press release). That step‑up matters for margins. In the May call, management tied Naukri’s standalone margin trajectory directly to top‑line growth: “if we are able to grow our topline in double digits, margins should remain the same. … If we, on the other hand, … grow at 7‑8%, then we may sort of lose a little bit of margin in the short term” .

Backed by a Data Moat That’s Hard to Replicate

Naukri’s AI push leans heavily on a proprietary dataset built over 25 years: the platform hosts over 118 million candidate profiles, adds roughly 25,000 new profiles daily, and serves about 13 million monthly active users (press release). Management has consistently argued that this data depth — spanning both employer needs and jobseeker behaviour — is a differentiator that “cannot be replicated quickly” . The same two‑sided network effects that have protected Naukri’s core listings business are now being infused into AI‑first products. If AI‑Rex demonstrably cuts end‑to‑end hiring cycle time for enterprises, as management targets, it would deepen the moat and make the platform stickier, potentially raising the take‑rate on clients over time — a concept Oberoi floated in May: “if we are able to make recruiters more productive, then this take rate can actually go up” .

What to Watch

The big questions after this rollout are about sustained conversion and margins. The jump from 1,000 to 4,000 AI‑Rex clients and the 3.7× growth in mandates are encouraging, but only 10% are paying — and the product is still early in its enterprise sales cycle. Talent Pulse, with 600+ paid customers and a ₹30–35 crore revenue base, offers a more concrete proof point. The real test will be whether the free‑to‑paid funnel scales across all three enterprise products without an expensive sales push, and whether the rising AI spend is offset by the 10%+ topline growth that management says is needed to maintain margins.

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Sources

  1. 1 Financial statement analysis
  2. 2 Earnings-call transcript, May 2026
  3. 3 BSE/NSE EOD prices & index levels
  4. 4 announcement_category · neutral · value 0.550000
  5. 5 Announcement under Regulation 30 (LODR)-Press Release / Media Release
  6. 6 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Announcement under Regulation 30 (LODR)-Investor Presentation
  7. 7 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Announcement under Regulation 30 (LODR)-Press Release / Media Release
  8. 8 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Board Meeting Outcome for Board Meeting Outcome For The Quarter And Year Ended March 31, 2026
  9. 9 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Audited Standalone And Consolidated Financial Results- FY26
  10. 10 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Corporate Action-Board approves Dividend
  11. 11 Info Edge (India) Ltd - 532777 - Outcome Of Board Meeting Held On February 13, 2026