Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q2 FY23 earnings conference call of LatentView Analytics Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Asha Gupta from EY Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you.
Thank you, Steven. Good evening to all participants in this call. Before we proceed, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward-looking statements that may involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, or other factors, which must be viewed in conjunction with our businesses that could cause future results, performance or attainment to differ significantly from what is being expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. It gives me great pleasure to invite all of you to the Q2 FY 2023 earnings call of LatentView Analytics Limited. The results and investor presentations have been made to you. In case anyone does not have the copy of press release or presentation or you are not in our mailing list, please do write to us, and we will be happy to send you the same.
To take us through the results today and to answer your questions, we have the CEO of the company, Mr. Rajan Sethuraman, whom we will be referring as Rajan, and we also have CFO of the company, Rajan Venkatesan, whom we will be referring as Raj to avoid any confusion while doing transcription. We will be starting the call with a brief update of the quarter, which will be given by Rajan, which will be then followed by the financials given by Raj. Having said that, I now hand over the floor to Rajan. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Asha, and thank you all for joining this earnings call. First of all, I wanted to wish all of you belated Diwali, given that this is a festive week, and it's indeed a pleasure to connect with all of you on the back of strong results that we have had for this quarter. We had a good set of numbers for this quarter as well. I wanted to share some highlights of this quarter, right? Both from a business perspective as well as in terms of people standpoint. Post that, I will hand it over to Raj to cover some of the highlights of the financials.
First off, we added five new accounts this quarter, and two of them happen to be in the Fortune 500 list. The other accounts as well a very interesting mix of opportunities spanning a fairly broad spectrum of work that we do across data engineering, consulting, as well as both diagnostic and descriptive, as well as predictive descriptive analytics work. This was also the first quarter where we signed our first $2 million-plus annual revenue contract. In the past, we have had several accounts where the total annual billing across multiple contracts is much in excess of the number that I mentioned.
This was the first instance where we had a single contract, one statement of work exceeding $2 million in annual revenue, so it was a first of such. In some ways, this is in line with what I have been sharing on earlier calls regarding the maturity of the data analytics space and how data analytics is becoming more mainstream as organizations are accelerating their digital transformation journeys and see data analytics as fairly important and integral part of the journey. We saw very healthy demand for our consulting, data engineering, and supply chain analytics capabilities across the new logos that I mentioned, for example. Particularly, we saw really good traction for the ConnectedView value proposition that we have been articulating under the supply chain analytics umbrella.
This is the value proposition that helps clients see across their entire supply chain landscape and help solve them for multiple pain points and opportunities in the supply chain, bringing critical data and analytics to different personas in the supply chain, helping them make high quality decisions. Our engagement with one of the leading toy manufacturers globally is leveraging the supply chain ConnectedView value proposition, and we believe that this start will lead on to further work that we do for them in the supply chain area as well as in other areas as well. From a people standpoint, there were several interesting milestones for us this quarter. We crossed 1,000 people headcount this quarter.
We also onboarded 100+ campus hires over the course of this quarter. Most importantly, we were also certified by the Great Place to Work Institute, and that is indeed a matter of pride for us. This is something that we were able to share not only with our current employees, but the broader talent base and alumni as well. We saw really good cheer as well as encouragement from most of them during our interactions. We also managed to revive our analytics roundtable that have been a regular feature in the past prior to the pandemic. We had put that on pause mode due to the pandemic related travel restrictions and constraints.
We were able to revive it this quarter, and the theme of the roundtable this quarter was improving customer experience using the power of data analytics. We were really happy to note the extensive participation, not only from existing clients and stakeholders, but also a number of prospects with whom we have been able to engage in bringing many of the interesting ideas and value propositions that we talk about within this customer experience area. Good interactions during that time period. We believe that this is also a sign of much more to come in terms of what we can do for clients in this particular area.
We also saw several firsts from a partnership standpoint. We signed partnership arrangements with Neo4j and ArangoDB. Both of them play in the graph theory and graph database spaces, bringing very strong solutions and capabilities. This is something that we've already started leveraging in client and prospect conversations in terms of how they can use the power of great graph database to solve problems. Especially where there's a lot of nonlinearity and interrelationships, right, between the different variables that they are considering. We also signed a partnership with IBM, specifically focused on the Indian market, more so in the financial services sector, but could also get extended into other spaces.
Also with Databricks, who are another leading player in the newly emerging cloud data ecosystem. We already have a partnership with Snowflake, and this additional partnership that we have signed with Databricks is also a step in the right direction in terms of leveraging the huge amount of activity that we are witnessing in the cloud ecosystem. From a people perspective, this quarter also saw the addition of quite a few people to our sales and business development team. We added about eight people into that team. We also brought on board 4 seasoned senior leaders to head up our European business.
One in the data engineering space to head up the data engineering practice and two senior leaders to head up the business practices that we have for the industrials and the technology verticals. Strong additions that we have made into the front end both on the sales and business development as well as on the business practice leadership front. Finally, I also wanted to touch upon what is happening on the inorganic growth and on the M&A front. We have evaluated quite a few opportunities over the last year since the IPO. A couple of them went as far as issuing a letter of intent and also due diligence. Till now, we have not been able to consummate a deal.
The last 2 deals where we went till the LOI due diligence stage, we had to drop for certain considerations that doesn't meet our criteria when it came to the final analysis. However, what we have done since then is to engage a couple of external partner firms to help us identify opportunities. At this point in time, there are about 10 of them in early stages of discussion and analysis. While the going is slow on this front, we do want to be deliberate and careful that we are actually identifying the right kind of opportunities and integrating them right into the fold.
Given that this will be the first acquisition that we'll be doing, we also want to make sure that we are doing it the right way and not in any hurry. We expect that there'll be more progress in the next 1, 2 quarters, and we'll be closer to fructifying something as we get to the close of this fiscal year. With that, I'll hand it over to Raj to touch upon the financial highlights, and then we can go from there to Q&A.
Thank you, Rajan. Good evening, everyone. Belated Diwali wishes to everyone, given that we are in the week of Diwali. Like Rajan mentioned, we are happy to announce a set of strong numbers for Q2. After Q1 which was little maybe muted in terms of earnings growth. Q2 we, you know, we witnessed a fairly strong bounce back in the overall demand situation, plus as well as the new deal flow. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, we've registered a revenue growth of about 10.4% on a sequential basis and about 39.7% on a year-on-year basis. We closed the quarter with a revenue of about INR 132.4 crores, which is the highest ever in the company's history.
The growth was fairly broad-based and driven across all our industry verticals, primarily technology, CPG, retail and BFSI, which continue to be the focus areas for us from a vertical standpoint. The revenue growth was driven across all these three verticals. We also see fairly healthy order book at this point in time, as well as good pipeline, which gives us the confidence that we will be able to continue the current growth trajectory in the coming quarters as well. From a profitability standpoint, EBITDA for the quarter came in at INR 37.3 crore, which reflected a growth of about 40% on a year-on-year basis and about 7%+ on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
The EBITDA margin itself for the quarter was at 28.2%, a drop of about 80 basis points compared to the immediately preceding quarter. The drop in EBITDA margin was primarily driven by increased investments both in the delivery capability building that we are doing in India. Rajan spoke about the campus hires that we did. A lot of these hires that we've done through the campus are currently undergoing their boot camp training and therefore not in billable roles. The incremental cost owing to the campus hires plus the investment that we are making in the front end, these are investments we are making ahead of the curve in anticipation of revenue growth that will follow.
Both of these led to a marginal decline in the EBITDA margin for the current quarter. However, this is still in excess of the historical EBITDA margin that we have been guiding the analyst as well when we've been talking to you guys. We've historically repeated that an EBITDA margin of between 25%-28% is sort of the comfortable levels at which we will continue to operate. But all in all, our EBITDA margins, despite these higher level of investments, continue to be in excess of that 25%-28% band that we've indicated. Therefore we are fairly confident that we'll be able to sustain these EBITDA margins for the coming quarters as well.
Our PAT for the quarter stood at INR 37.3 crores, which reflects a 70% growth, 70%+ growth on a year-on-year basis and 18% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Coming to PAT itself, there was a one-time benefit, or say, I would say this benefit would sort of come to us even in the next couple of quarters. This is owing to exercise of ESOPs in the U.S. where, in the U.S., for the difference between the fair market value of shares as on the day of the exercise and the price at which the options were granted is allowable as an expense for the purposes of tax.
Therefore, in this quarter, when we opened our exercise window, there was a substantial exercise of options by our US employees, which resulted in a one-time benefit on taxes. In the long term, of course, we expect our effective tax rate to go back to that 25% level. The lower PAT in the current quarter is all owing to the tax benefit that we got in the US. Coming to our H1 performance, operating revenues stood at INR 2 crore, which again reflects the growth of about 38% on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA margins for the half year again stood at about 28.6%. PBT increased by 50.8% to INR 85.1 crore for the first half.
In terms of geographies, U.S. continues to be the dominant geography for us, contributing about 95% of our operating revenues. Europe, while still being small, the big update on Europe is we have now seen substantial addition in our content team in the European region. We've hired a head of business as of end of last quarter. In fact, he started working with us, you know, effective first of July. We've also onboarded close to about 4-5 people who will be positioned in the European geography, Germany, Netherlands and U.K. as well. We hope that we will be able to drive growth in the European region in line with what we had stated earlier.
In terms of our balance sheet, our cash levels continue to be fairly healthy. Overall cash balance, including the IPO balance, is currently at about INR 1,000+ crore. However, the last point that Rajan spoke about was on M&A itself. We have seen increased levels of traction within the company in terms of our deal evaluation as well as the pipeline of opportunities that are currently available for us to go after.
As mentioned, a couple of these transactions we progressed to a fairly advanced stage, but we had to sort of drop the ball on them because of various issues including cultural fitment, overall fitment in terms of strategy, as well as our estimate of what the right valuation for those companies should be. Having said that, we do continue to see good momentum. We've in fact appointed a couple of advisors to now help us to scout for potential acquisitions. We're fairly hopeful that we should be announcing something on the M&A front in the coming quarters. With that, I would like to summarize by saying that we continue to witness good momentum on the organic side, good deal flow.
The order book continues to be healthy, pipeline continues to be healthy. We will continue to again invest for growth and capacity enhancement. As far as the revenue growth outlook is concerned, at least for the next few quarters, we would like to replicate the performance in the current quarter. With that, now I would hand it back to the operator and we can open the floor for Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Vimal Goel from Alchemy Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on the hiring outlook, attrition trends and offshoring trends. If you can highlight on these three, how much are we expecting in terms of add? We are at just about 1,000 plus. How big do we see our team by the end of this year? Secondly, how is attrition? Raj, you did point out something on the supply chain, but if you could just highlight how have the, you know, LTM or TTM attrition trends been like.
If you can just highlight something on the offshore trends that you know because you are sort of getting new large contracts, this will probably entail a bit of on-site presence as far as your company is concerned. Does that mean that there will be some kind of margin pressure going forward, right? The revenue might remain very, very strong. That could mean that you know we could be at the lower end of the margin band that we talked about? Just yeah. I probably have a couple of follow-ups after. Yeah. Thanks.
Yeah. Hey, Vimal. Rajan here. Let me address that. Firstly, in terms of what we are witnessing in terms of additions, right, to the number of people, we kind of went past the 1,000 mark during this quarter. I think we are already up to 1,050 plus, right, at this time. I'm expecting that the growth momentum that we are seeing will continue into the coming quarters as well. While I don't have a specific number, right, in terms of what headcount we'll end up with at the end of this year, we will have enough people to make sure that we are sustaining the growth momentum that we are seeing, right, in this quarter.
We are expecting that to continue as well, right, through the remainder of this year. Obviously, there will be some aspects of nonlinearity that could kick in terms of one, leveraging some of the value propositions and the assets that we are building. Secondly, also in terms of what will be the acceptance from continued price increases, right, that we can see in the market. These things will play out in terms of what the impact will be on the number of people that we will need. Now, having said that, from an attrition perspective, we saw the highest levels of attrition in the months of July and August. Since then it has been tapering down.
September and October have been much better, and we are expecting that the attrition will moderate in the coming months as well. We're not expecting it to go back to the kind of levels that we might have seen during the pandemic or the second half of last year, for example. Right? That is something that we are factoring in as we make our hiring projections. From an on-site, offshore perspective, for the nature of work that we are doing, we are not seeing any big swings. The larger contracts as well continue to be at the kind of ratios that we are used to. We were operating at about 1 is to 5.5 or so.
There isn't any big swing on that number in terms of the percentage of people that we need offshore. One area where we might need more presence on-site is the consulting work that we are doing, because that does call for an even more iterative approach, working very closely with the clients. However, the consulting work, as I have shared earlier, is typically smaller, shorter duration, intensive work aimed at defining a strategy or a roadmap. We are not expecting that there will be like a huge set of people that we will need. I mean, where we need domain expertise, we'll be ready to leverage people even offshore who can travel at short notice for short durations of time, right, to do the work.
I'm not expecting any big swing in the on-site, offshore mix in the coming quarters. We will have to see how this plays out as the deals get even larger. Some of the deals that are larger in the past, we have witnessed that the ratios have been better than the smaller pieces of engagement. Because the moment you have a large amount of work, then there is greater flexibility in terms of how you structure the work, and therefore, not only the on-site, offshore mix, but also in terms of the pyramid and the mix of skills that are required. That should play to our advantage, right, as deals get larger in the coming quarters.
Understood, sir. I have two more questions. The second question is on the overall demand, and I have one housekeeping, a housekeeping question. Just on the demand outlook, in the backdrop of, you know, the Big Tech recently announcing their numbers, a bit of caution was sort of highlighted. What are we seeing? Are we seeing any impact? Because Big Tech certainly is a larger portion of our business. So what are we seeing? Are we experiencing a bit of caution in those accounts or how is it going for us?
The second question is a bookkeeping question on the while you said that, you know, you have invested in the front end and you know invested in capabilities, that would. I think that would go in a certain portion of that would go in the employee cost, if I'm not wrong, or most of it will go in the employee cost. But as I noticed, you know, that has actually, you know, that is, that is. If you look at that in percentage of sales, that has been in control over the last quarter. But I see your operating expense is growing sharply, by 21%. How should we look at that?
I mean, should we take this INR 15 crore as the run rate going forward, or is there a one-off over there?
Okay. Yeah. Let me address the first question, and then I will ask Raj to weigh in on the other question. We don't see any particular impacts in the technology sector yet. The one place where there has been a little bit of sluggishness is in retail, where we have had some kind of pause, right, in clients taking decisions with respect to new initiatives. Even in retail, we have actually closed an important win not in the last quarter, but since the end of the last quarter, right? I mean, that seems to be in the right direction. Obviously the retail sector has been impacted because of the macroeconomic headwinds, right? Talk of recession and everything.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sluggishness within the retail sector. In technology, we haven't seen any sluggishness yet. I mean, both in terms of conversations as well as real opportunities maturing and client decision-making. What I will, however, say is that some of the larger deals that we are pursuing, they will obviously take a little bit more time in comparison to deals that are, say, less than INR half a million size. Because it'll mean that more constituents are from the client organizations are involved in the decision-making, and obviously it'll take a little bit more time. The conversations that we are currently having, they seem to be proceeding in that right direction. One other thing that we are starting to see is some consolidation.
Meaning that there are accounts where within a particular part of the business you might be engaged only in doing certain kind of work, and the client has been using multiple vendors for doing data engineering, for doing visualization and look-back analytics, and somebody else for doing the predictive prescriptive modeling work. There is some trend towards consolidation. We still have to see how it plays out. We are starting to see some signs of that. The good news for us on that front is that we are already positioned well with the higher value-adding fuzzy problem-solving premium work. In our case, it'll be more about backward integration into the data engineering work. That is a capability that we have been aggressively building strongly.
I would believe that we are positioned well should that consolidation pick up steam. As I said, it is still early days on that front, and we'll have to see how it transfers. Overall, not much sluggishness yet in the technology space. But obviously, you know, you are starting to see some of the results in the commentary, and we'll want to watch that closely, right, in terms of how it unfolds. Let me pass it to Raj to address your second question, right, related to the numbers.
Yeah. In terms of the second question, correct me if I'm wrong. Your question was in relation to the other operating expenses. Is that correct? Where we witnessed a growth of about 21% in the current quarter compared to the earlier quarter.
That is.
Right, sir.
That is right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just to sort of let you know, of course, while this growth seems to be a substantial growth over the immediately preceding quarter, it was not unanticipated or unplanned expenses. In the immediately bygone quarter, we hosted our annual or biannual roundtable event, which is a customer event that we typically hold in the United States. This last edition of the customer event happened in San Francisco. A large portion of the increase that you see compared to the earlier quarter was attributed or is attributable to this particular marketing event that we conducted, which was very well received and also resulted in a significant amount of lead generation from potential and prospective clients.
Now, of course, this is an event that in the last couple of years we were unable to hold because owing to the pandemic. It's something that we will revive. In fact, we will have another roundtable event most likely early next year in February or March. Therefore, to that extent, this will be an expense that will be recurring in nature going forward as well. As regards to the other reason as to why the operating expenses went up, that is also partially attributable to increased travel and visa costs as we continue to see more and more people traveling to meet clients.
As well as people from our offshore locations going to the U.S., and us enabling them with work permits and visas. You will see increased levels of expense both on travel and visa costs. In that sense, these are not one-time in nature or non-recurring nature. You would expect similar level of spends to happen going forward. A lot of this has direct correlation with revenue while it's sitting under the other expenses bucket. I mean, travel, typically, most of this travel and visa costs is related to project-related travel. The marketing spends that we are doing will hopefully result in increase or enhance revenue in the future.
To that extent, there is linkage to revenue as well.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Krishna Thakkar from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, we can hear you.
Thank you for the opportunity. I know we've hired someone for Europe, and we also had some S&M personnel added in this quarter. Why was it sequentially not growing? Like, even if it grew, it grew really little. I had a question on that.
Sorry, I'm not able to understand your question, Krishna.
Europe was soft sequentially. I wanted to understand if we are seeing good demand there or for the next few quarters? 'Cause in Q2 it was soft.
Yeah. No, the effect of the additions that we are making will take some time to play out. Europe, I mean, you might have heard from commentary by other companies as well, I mean, it is different, right? It is not the way you go to market and how you sell. It has its own nuances, right? Europe as a whole, and within that, each of those countries as well. In some sense, we are starting from pretty much scratch there, right, with the induction of the new Europe business head and the team that he is building. I expect it'll take at least two to three quarters to start seeing some decent momentum.
Now, having said that, we did win our first contract since our new Europe business head came on board. It's a small one, but it's a good beginning and it's an account of the right sorts where there is plenty of other opportunity and therefore there is good growth prospects, right, that we can look at in that account. In addition to that, there are at least half a dozen interesting conversations. Now, the time taken for these to fructify will obviously be dependent on multiple factors. One just in terms of our own ability to ramp up and build the necessary relationships and the connects with the right stakeholders in these prospects. More importantly, also how Europe pans out, right, from a macroeconomic perspective.
At this point in time, I would imagine that it'll be at least a couple of quarters before we start seeing some good momentum build up in Europe. However, the intent is that over a three to four-year timeframe, that Europe will get to about 15%-20% of our overall revenue mix. All the investments that we are making are with that objective in mind.
Sure. Thank you for that. I have a question, BFSI industries as well. Q2 seemed weak for both of these. Going forward, how do we see these verticals?
Again, BFSI is definitely a vertical that we are doubling down on. I have again indicated this in the past. BFSI and retail are the two sectors that we want to double down on. There is some sluggishness in retail, as I mentioned in response to an earlier question, but that hasn't detracted us from ensuring that we are building sales business development bandwidth, taking the right kind of marketing action and as well as capability building and value prop and asset building actions at the back end. Retail, BFSI, I think, we will continue to invest even over the course of any market or macroeconomic headwinds that might be there, right, in those sectors.
Industrials, we have a new business head, and interestingly, I mean, he comes from a very strong automotive background. So he has opened up multiple threads and conversations right at this point in time, and we are expecting that some of that will start paying dividends in the next one, two quarters. The automotive sector itself is undergoing significant transition, right? As more and more companies look to you know, electrification and automation, right, and autonomous and so many other trends that are there in place. Much of these really have a very strong underlying data analytics backbone, right? That'll be the need of the hour.
We are expecting that, given the strong relationship that we already have with two of the top automotive manufacturers, right, in the world, we'll be able to carry forth the credibility as well as the capabilities that we have built, right, on the back of those two relationships into multiple other openings that are now coming up, right, on the back of hiring a new lead. Again, I would say that early days, but looks promising in terms of the growth prospects within industrials.
Sure. Thank you for that. Just one last question on sales and marketing. Sequentially, we saw a decline in headcount. Should we expect you to add more, or how should we see that moving forward?
Sorry, there is.
Sales and marketing. We had 57 in Q1, and we have 52 in Q2.
I'm not sure. Raj, are you aware of this?
No, actually, Krishna. What are you talking about over here?
The sales and marketing headcount that we share.
I don't think we share sales and marketing headcount.
By function, sales and marketing. It's on slide 21.
Okay.
The 52 which was there was 57 in Q1.
Yeah.
Just want to understand what happened out there and why, you know, we saw a reduction of 5% quarter-on-quarter.
No, no. There, what you will also see is some of that reduction that is. The onsite and offshore mix also over there is a little important. The addition of about 7-8 people that we spoke about were all in onsite roles. There is a lead generation slash inside sales team that operates out of India as well. A lot of the, in fact, the degrowth that you are seeing over there can be attributable to a movement in that particular team. I will come back to you on this, Krishna.
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay. Utilization for the quarter is similar to last quarter, around 78% odd, or are we seeing a buildup in the bench?
No. The utilization continues to be at similar levels. The bench, specifically, like I told you, has gone up only because of the campus hires that we hired. Most of them, again, I think from October onwards will be moving to build roles or build projects.
Therefore you will see that utilization levels will start looking or inching upwards in line with historical trends. Typically, Q1 and Q2 is where bulk of the hiring happens through campuses and therefore to that extent there is a buildup in the bench. Q3 and Q4 are typically we tend to see the utilization levels start to inch up again.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to the participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. For any follow-up, you may be requested to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions from my side. Firstly, on Q3, if we understand correctly, Q3 is usually strong for LatentView . This time also you expect Q3 to be strong, and will it be better than Q2? That's my first question.
I mean, we're not putting out a percentage guidance or anything at this point in time.
Yeah, just directionally.
We see, yeah, we see strong momentum though, right? I mean, we are already at the end of October almost, and going by what we have seen in this month and the expected deal closures and work to commence in the coming month, I would say that we will continue to have a strong quarter in Q3, absolutely.
Okay. Thanks for that. Secondly, Raj mentioned that in his opening remarks that you would like to replicate the performance which you have done in the current quarter. If I look at your H1 growth rate is almost around 30% in dollar terms. Last time when we spoke, you mentioned that you would like to target around 20% kind of a growth rate for the full year. Are you effectively, you know, increasing your expectation in terms of the revenue growth, maybe around 28%-29% for the full year? Hello?
Sorry, Raj, are you on mute?
Yeah. No. I'll take that. Yeah, thanks for the question. Like he mentioned, at this point in time, we are not guiding, you know, or giving out guidances in terms of what our full year revenue growth would be. To sort of answer that question, we have stated this in the past as well. While the industry is growing at 20%, we want to better that by a sort of fair margin. Therefore, overall growth between 25%-30% is what we set out to achieve on an organic basis.
At this point in time, based on the order book that we have, we believe we have a strong chance of maintaining those growth levels.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot for that clarification, Raj. Lastly, you mentioned about your partnership with IBM in Indian markets in the BFSI sector. For this partnership, is there any investment commitment from Latent View's side to sell your solutions, and would that have any impact on the margins?
Not too much. It is based on prospect by prospect at this point in time. We are not going to be going ahead and building a bench strength of people with capabilities and IBM-specific components, right, within the tech stack at this time. In fact, IBM itself is taking a fairly flexible approach with respect to their tech stack. While there are components in there which are IBM proprietary, they are very much open and flexible in terms of clients picking and choosing even a best of breed approach, but fitting overall within the tech stack framework, right, that IBM has drawn up.
In some sense, at this time, some of the capabilities that will be needed to convert those opportunities are ones that we already have, given that we do a fairly broad spectrum of work across. We do work across a broad spectrum of technologies that are there. We are not expecting that there'll be a whole lot of upfront capability building or bench building that'll be required. We are, however, calibrating and taking actions on specific opportunities, right, that we are in conversations with. Currently, there is a discussion with one of the midsize banks where we are having a conversation.
With them, there are very specific requirements, right, in terms of what they want to do and therefore what will be the technical and analytical skill set that will be required. If there are any gaps in that, we will seek to leverage the partnership to build those capabilities or certifications as the case may be. I don't see any significant investments from a capability building specifically for the IBM partnership. We did do that in reference to the Snowflake partnership, right, last year. There might be a need to do that in some of the other areas, right, depending on the traction that we see.
Obviously, in general, many of the partnerships, it's a bit of a two-way kind of a street, meaning that we want to bring some of the accounts where we have a strong relationship to the table. We are also expecting that the partner will bring such opportunities to the table. Therefore, based on what we see, we will take a calibrated approach to building any additional capability or certification or bench strength as the case may be.
Sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot for the detailed answers, and all the best for FY 2023.
Thanks, Karan.
The next question is from the line of Dipesh from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just want to understand about the most of the growth is driven by top clients. Top 20 clients explain large part of the growth. Can you help us understand how we are building the funnel across client bucket? How many active clients currently we have, and how we are seeing some of them are entering into maybe next top 20 for us? Thanks.
Sure. Let me take that. Rajan, keep me honest or correct me if some of the numbers are slightly different. We have upwards of 50 clients right at this point in time. You're right that the top 20 clients obviously account for much of the revenue. It's in line with our philosophy that we want to work with few clients but go really deep in terms of the quantum of work that we are doing and the spectrum of work that we are doing for them.
Also, we have mentioned that in general we are looking at working with either the Fortune 500 kind of companies, right, which have a propensity to spend on data analytics and see that important part of their agenda, or emerging companies where data analytics is the main driver, right, of their competitive advantage. Therefore, there will be the willingness to spend on the right kind of initiator. In overall, the concentration is not something that we are unduly worried about because it is aligned with, you know, with the philosophy of focus that we want. Typically, we have seen that we are able to add about a dozen plus accounts or more, right, over the years. Obviously, that number will now increase, right, as the base itself increases.
We expect that about 15% of revenue will come from such new accounts. 85% of the revenue comes from existing accounts, and that is something that we are continuing to see even in these quarters. Which basically translates into growing the business that we have with the existing accounts. While there will be the aspect of continuing to look for high quality accounts that we bring in into the fold, the expectation also is that we will continue to grow revenue with the existing accounts in a fairly aggressive fashion so that we are able to maintain that kind of 85, 55, 15% split.
In fact, I would expect that existing accounts, as they become more mature and they accelerate their journeys, the initiatives that they will undertake will grow at a fairly fast clip. I don't expect that balance to change significantly, right, in the coming quarters. We'll continue to add new accounts, but the growth will be driven significantly by growth that we have in the existing accounts. Therefore, the concentration that you might see while it'll improve over a period of time, right? I mean, instead of, say, having 20 accounts that contribute to the bulk of the revenues in a year from now it might be 30 accounts, right?
We do expect to continue to be a fairly focused player, right, in terms of the logos that we work with and the type of work that we do.
Yeah. Just one follow-up on it. In terms of, let's say top 5, top 10 clients, can you help us understand how gross service index is changing over a period of time in terms of how many services we provide them? Thanks.
I don't have the exact percentages, but I can give you a qualitative answer. In general, given the intention to expand the scope of services and do more for the accounts that we are working with, we try and bring in all facets of the capabilities, right, to the table. The best example of that is the amount of work that we are now doing on the data engineering side, which has really grown in a significant fashion, right, over the last six quarters or so, right? six to eight quarters. We weren't doing much of data engineering work, but today quite a bit of the growth is coming from the introduction of the data engineering capabilities and the services that we can provide.
One other area where we are seeing traction, as I mentioned earlier, is supply chain. Given the massive supply chain disruptions that most companies have faced, our value proposition is resonating well, and we are expecting therefore that will be a new service, right, that we will be able to take into the market. I know, and that is very relevant, whether it is a retail or a CPG company or even for high tech companies, right? Especially the ones that are in the business of devices and printers and so on. We are seeing good traction for the supply chain capabilities as well.
We believe that some of the other horizontal capabilities that we are building, say around predictive analytics, especially around use of NLP, NLG or graph-based approaches or image analytics, are also seeing traction. The intent will be to bring these capabilities also with the existing accounts. If the evidence of the last six, eight quarters is anything to go by, we expect that we will be able to expand the scope of services that we provide. However staying within the overall wheelhouse that we have, right, of data analytics. We are not looking to stray out of that wheelhouse at this time.
Starting from analytics consulting and strategy and roadmap exercises, all the way to data engineering and predictive prescriptive analytics, that full suite, and again, cutting across the value chain is something that we will want to take into every one of the accounts that we work with.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dave from InvestYadnya . Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for providing me opportunity to ask the question. My first question was, you have mentioned that, you are expecting growth of around 25%-30% on organic basis. This is for this year or for the long term, over the long-term period?
Subhash, do you wanna take that?
Yeah. You know, again, like I said, this is, you know, while we're not giving out a guidance, this is what we believe is achievable in the next few years, because the industry itself is expected to grow at 18%-20%, and we are making significant investments and also operate in areas which are expected to grow at a rate which is higher than the 18%-20%. However, having said this, the one possibility that we will definitely not rule out is if there is any growth concerns or demand-related shrinkages that we've witnessed because of the macroeconomic situation that is playing out in the US and Europe, right?
Because of which the industry growth itself falls to a number which is below 18%-20%, there could be some impact on our overall organic growth, as well. At this point in time, what our endeavor would be, it would be to beat the industry growth rate by a significant margin because of, one, the that we are making, and two, also the areas that we operate in, which are largely around data engineering, advanced analytics.
Our investments in Europe, which we believe once the demand situation improves or the macroeconomic situation improves in Europe, we will, you know, be in a position to take advantage of the investment that we are making at this point in time to grab market.
Okay. Thank you. My last question is, so you have mentioned earlier that premium work you are doing, so can you distinguish between what is the premium work and not so premium work? And of course, the revenue percentage of your revenue which comes from your premium work, if you can say. Yeah.
There isn't a whole lot of low-end work that we are doing. In fact, much of the work that we do falls within a fairly tight band in terms of what we are able to charge, right? From a pricing standpoint, for the work that we do. However, I will call out that the consulting work that we do will typically be a little bit more intensive and premium, although it'll be a smaller quantum of revenue itself. Because consulting engagement in general they are short and intensive, and they are aimed at doing a strategy or a road mapping exercise, right? At a fast clip. It'll set up much other work, right?
That will follow suit, right? From an implementation standpoint. There is a little bit of that premium feel, right? When it comes to consulting work. Across the rest of the work, whether it is data engineering or whether it is look-back or look-ahead analytics, in general, we have gone after the complex, fuzzier problems. Even within data engineering work, we take up more of the architecting and the creating the additional data layers that are necessary for doing undertaking the complex analytics and answering the business questions as opposed to doing the regular lift and shift or cloud migration type of activities. Not that we don't do some of those work at all, but in general, it has always been in connection with business problem solving, right? In some sense.
To illustrate this better, much of the work that we do and the deliverables that we leave behind are not so much the data platforms or the pipelines that we build or the dashboards or the models that we build, but more the very specific actions and recommendations that we make on the particular business decisions, right? That people need to make. Whether it is in relation to supply chain inventory planning or network planning or whether it is related to marketing spend or advertising spend or going dark analysis or whether it is strategic, right? In terms of where should they be focusing on in terms of their own acquisition opportunities or investment opportunities. Those are the questions that we answer, the ones that keep our stakeholders awake at night.
Data analytics is more a tool, right? To answer those tough questions, right? Ensure that you are taking the right call in light of whatever data and information is available. That's been the nature of the work. Therefore, overall, I would say that much of the work is of that nature. There isn't too much that we are pursuing which is what you would call at the commoditized end of the spectrum.
Okay. Can I ask one more question?
Yeah.
How much time does it take for a fresher to become billable? It might be higher, I think.
We have been averaging about 8- 10 weeks, okay, at this time. I mean, obviously, in the last few quarters, there has been this big demand supply gap, right? Everybody is trying to accelerate the process. We have witnessed instances where we have been able to get somebody productive even in a six week timeframe or even in a four week timeframe. The preferred model is where we get our people to spend a proper six week kind of a boot camp and a capstone, and then spend maybe another six weeks in a shadow kind of a mode so that they come to grips with the specifics of the client and the context and the nature of the work that we are doing before we actually get them into a billable role.
That's what the preferred is. If I were to go by data in the last few quarters, I would say that we are currently probably averaging about six to eight weeks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chintan from Chanakya Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I just wanted to ask a little bit more on the production platforms business. If you could provide me more insights on what is going on in that area. On the slides I see two new products which you've added, PART and AI Assist. If you could give me a little more color on it, what exactly they do.
Sorry, the second question, which are the ones that you mentioned, Chintan?
Yeah, PART and AI Assist that I see on the slides.
Right. Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, overall commentary on the I mean, I wouldn't call them products really, I mean, because I think that might be presuming too much. Having said that, we have built a suite of assets and accelerators. Maybe some of them we can actually call them a solution because they do address a particular pain point or an opportunity that might be there in the market. For example, SmartInsights or Casper, for example, right? MatchView, they are examples of that. I think PART was an anomaly detection tool that we built in order to help identify what data should be taken into account for specific modeling purposes. Whereas AI Assist is, I think, more along the lines of a chatbot.
It was a solution that we built for a particular client and then we were able to abstract it and then create something that can help answer queries in a fairly user-friendly interface, right? Using a chatbot kind of an interface. While we have been building these in the past and they have been largely helpful in opening doors on new conversations and maybe providing some nonlinearity from an effort standpoint where we have been able to reuse either the entire asset or parts of it, right, in the work that we undertake. The intention going forward is that this will be a little bit more detailed and specific, right, to the value propositions that we are building.
In the past, it was more a technical or a math play that we were doing, because we had understood that algorithm or we had the capability to create something, right? It would have been a very technical kind of an asset or an accelerator. However, going forward, the intent is that the asset accelerators will be very, very specific and focused on particular value propositions that we are taking in the market. I talked about ConnectedView, right, in relation to what we are doing in the supply chain analytics area. This ConnectedView value proposition is going to be supported by a few accelerators and assets that we are building, which will actually help deliver the ConnectedView value proposition.
Therefore, the intent would be to more tightly integrate this into not just the selling and the business development process, but also in the delivery of the very specific value propositions. I would expect that the contribution from these solutions and accelerators will increase in the coming quarters. By that, I am also expecting that there will be therefore more reusability and nonlinearity, right, that will come in in terms of effort versus revenue profile, right, going forward.
Okay. The second question which I had was, that out of the 10% growth that we have quarter-on-quarter, how much can we attribute to currency and how much would be driven by plain increase in, I would say, volumes or the total material that we generated?
Roughly about.
Yeah.
Yeah. Roughly about 1.7% of that growth that you see in the current quarter or 1.8% of the growth is owing to the currency improvement and the remaining is all organic growth.
Got it.
In all the terms.
All right. Yeah. These are the questions I had. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thanks, Chintan.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Akshay Kothari from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah. I wanted to know regarding the inorganic growth which we are looking for. There has been a significant traction for analytics firms by the PE investors, and we have been hearing a lot of these things. Are we going to invest as a minority holder or are we going to go for a full acquisition?
At this point in time, at least, this is probably true for the first one or two even acquisitions that we will be doing, we are looking at majority control, you know, when we're looking at inorganic opportunities, where we will, one, get to tightly integrate the business and, two, also derive maximum synergy out of our investment into that business and that is possible only if we take a controlling stake in that particular company. At this point in time, looking at controlled or 100% buyout opportunities.
Okay. The five accounts we added, what was the hook that got us this account? Was it only on the basis of cost and how does the system work actually? Are there some tenders and some specific scope of work which is outlined or is it something based on some relations that we are able to generate?
I think, I mean, this quarter, the five accounts that we added, I don't think any of them was on the back of an RFP or a tender.
Okay.
Pretty much in all the instances, it was on the back of either an outreach and a fresh relationship that we established or an existing or a warm introduction that we would have got to somebody who had a mandate and who was looking, right, to get things started. I think in at least three of the instances, there was an upfront exercise around defining what needed to be done from a scope and a conversation perspective, which evolved in a very iterative fashion, right? Based on discussions with them, as opposed to any concrete idea or use case that they might have had in their mind to begin with.
Sometimes, the introduction leads you to get started, right, get the conversation going, but then the specifics of what needs to be done emerges, right, as part of that iterative process.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity and all the best.
Thanks, Akshay.
The next question is from the line of Sriram Rajan, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity and congratulations on the great results. If I'm not audible, just shout out. Question to the Latent View Analytics team is, in terms of acquisition, are you looking at companies that will add to your technical capabilities? Or is this acquisition to enhance your geographic presence or grow your sales in regions that you're not present in?
Right. Sriram, yeah, thanks for the question. The intent is to actually try and use the inorganic route to plug gaps or maybe accelerate development in areas of focus. There are five areas of focus, right, for us. From a geographic standpoint, it is Europe, and I've called it out. From a horizontal and type of work, data engineering and supply chain analytics are the two areas of focus. From an industry standpoint, BFSI, banking financial services and retail, right, are the two industries, right, that are on focus.
An ideal acquisition, right, if you had to find one like that, would be somebody who's doing, say, retail supply chain work, supported by data engineering capabilities as well in Europe, because it'll tick multiple boxes then, right? Obviously, we don't believe that, you know, all the opportunities that we identify and go after will tick all of the boxes. We are expecting that we'll tick a few of the boxes, right? Maybe there's a very strong data engineering play, for example, cutting across multiple industries and maybe multiple geographies. It could be somebody who's exclusively focused on the BFSI or on the retail industry, right? With very specific value propositions that we have built for them.
The intention with any of these would be that there is stickiness in the form of clients, contracts or IP-based work that they are doing. There is that confidence and comfort available, right? That as we acquire and integrate them into our business, that there will be enough standalone momentum that these will have as they come into our fold. Given that we are also growing and we are looking to actually spend much of our management attention and bandwidth, right, on the organic growth as well, we don't want to look at opportunities where they'll be needing substantive bolstering, right? Even in the first one to two years.
The important point would be that there is some momentum on their own which can get further accelerated, right, by what we bring to the table. Those are the kind of considerations that we have in mind, right, at this point in time, as we look at acquisitions.
Thank you, Rajan. That was excellent. Very, very clear. Second question, just to get a understanding of the way you run the business. Is the revenue that you clock predominantly time and material basis or it's an outcome-based contracts that you write?
Right. What we predominantly operate in what we call a managed services model, okay? About 70% plus of our revenue comes in that model. What we mean by managed services is that we have set up an analytics capability that will be responsible for executing a book of work, a set of initiatives or use cases, right, if you may, over a fairly largish period of time, right? Running into several quarters. In all these managed services kind of contracts, we will have a master services agreement that runs into three or more years. In many of these cases actually, the MSA is over an indefinite period, meaning there is no termination date on the MSA.
The MSA provides the umbrella construct under which we can write multiple statements of work, for that account. The way it happens is once we do the MSA based on the initial upfront consulting work that we do for them, where we define the analytics strategy or the roadmap of initiatives, or in some instances the client will already have that strategy and roadmap thought through, there will be an initial book of work that we will start with. Saying that, "Okay, here are all the pieces of work, and some of these are one time, some of these are ongoing in nature. And therefore, this is the shape and size and configuration of the team that we need to have in place in terms of seniority, expertise, capability." We bill the client a monthly fee for the team that we put together.
Under the MSA, they will have the flexibility to add to the team as well as take out of the team, depending on the pace at which they want to move on the different initiatives that have been identified. We also continuously keep identifying other things that can be brought to the table in terms of new ideas, what else they can do with their data, what other analytics might help speed up their decision-making, right? All of this keeps contributing to the book of work, and that is how much of the engagement grows in size over a period of time. That is the typical preferred construct that we have.
About 20% of the work or maybe 25% of the work is of a fixed fee, fixed scope nature, where there is a very specific use case or a problem statement, and then, we sit down and agree with the client in terms of, how do we go about solving that. In some of those instances, the actual invoicing might be driven by specific milestones or deliverables that we need to create for them as part of that engagement. Broadly, that's the kind of construct that we have in place.
Yeah, thanks. I'm not asking the third question, operator, just the second question. Same thing, I just, a little more, clarity. If you take the consultants and they run the managed services contract, you identify specific work that needs to be solved by a group of consultants across various seniority. When the client evaluates it, do they evaluate it based on saying, "I put for this project on a monthly basis, I need 10 resources, three of whom are senior, some of them are data engineers, some of them are architects," et cetera? Or is it that you say, "I will improve the... I'll reduce the fraud, or I will improve on outcomes, say, in terms of inventory, turnover days or, I'll improve your attribution levels," or it's based on people ultimately?
Yeah. At this point in time, it is still largely tied to the effort, Sriram. While there is a good amount of discussion that happens on the KPIs and the metrics that we will impact and the extent to which we might be able to move the needle, it is not an outcome-based pricing, okay? If that is the question you're asking. Our fees are not tied to specific KPI movements or needle movements on the targets that we set up. What we use them for, though, is to ensure that whatever we have proposed as part of the statement of work, the team composition and how we will do the work, has a relationship, right, to the overall outcome.
In fact, we actually take this very seriously and we have an internal construct called a service delivery excellence team that actually monitors and measures the outcome that we deliver. The only thing is that given that many of these KPIs that you are targeting to improve, they are not only influenced by the data analytics and the recommendations that we make. I mean, there's a lot of things that need to happen at the client end as well in terms of their org structure or processes or changes to policy or some implementation of recommendations that we don't want to claim that all of the credit is on account of the work that we are doing, right? Or the recommendations that we are making.
I think this is something that will probably mature in the coming quarters and years. There might be more willingness on the part of clients to actually say that at least in those instances where there can be very direct attribution to the particular recommendation that is being made or a change that is being implemented, that there could be linkages that are made to the fees as well, the outcome and the fees. At this point in time, we don't have outcome-based pricing, right, if that's your question. In general, I don't also see that too much within the data analytics space itself. Most of our peers and competitors also largely work on the back of models similar to what I outlined.
Thank you. We take the last question from the line of Karan Uppal from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the follow-up. I just want to understand in terms of the services that, the nature of the work or the services in terms of consulting, analytics and data engineering. At the time of the IPO, you mentioned that the split was 15% consulting, 60% analytics and 20% is data engineering. In last 2 calls you mentioned that data engineering has scaled significantly. Has that split changed?
Yeah, I would say that data engineering is probably running at about 25%, at this point in time, and I wouldn't be surprised if it actually becomes even 30%, right, in terms of work. The reason being that larger, more complex initiatives, they call for more robust data platforms, integrating data across multiple silos that might exist within the organization. Given that the low-hanging fruit would be gone by then, right, where you use data from a particular business unit or a silo to tackle a simpler use case or a problem statement, and now you're looking at more holistic or optimization, right, taking more things into account. The data platforms will become a necessity almost, right? A cost of doing business.
I'm expecting that those initiatives will gain more traction. It will also be dependent on the maturity of the company, right, and where they are within their own analytics or digital transformation journeys. I'm expecting that data engineering will continue to grow in terms of the overall contribution to the revenue. 25% approximately at this time, potentially, could go up to 30%, right, in the coming quarters.
In terms of the scalability between the three of the services, consulting, business analytics and data engineering, I believe that data engineering is the most scalable in terms of the deal sizes. Correct me if I'm wrong, and is the management's thought process to scale also in that line of thought?
Absolutely. You are right that data engineering initiatives will get larger sooner than what you might witness on the predictive, prescriptive or diagnostic descriptive analytics. You are again right that we are actually doubling down on data engineering. I mentioned that data engineering is one of the five focus areas that we talked about. We recently brought on board a new head of the data engineering business. We have actually shared that as part of the press release that we put out as well. He is aggressively building out his team. We are also changing the approach. I mean, in the past, data engineering was more a technical necessity, right, from a data integration perspective, right, that I just mentioned.
We want to also flip this a bit and look at how data engineering can become the enabler of the business value propositions that we are driving. I talked about ConnectedView on supply chain, for example, right? We have been talking about subscription analytics, right, as a value proposition that we've been taking into the market. We believe that all of these business value propositions, whether they are industry-specific or whether they are addressing a particular part of the horizontal value chain, can benefit a great deal from a more robust data engineering foundation, right? That is how we want to reorient the data engineering value propositions that we are building. They won't be standalone migration or governance or lineage.
I mean, we'll have a few of those as well, but more so we will focus on how the business value propositions can be supported by very strong data engineering foundations. That is also the need of the hour and ask from most of the constituents that we are talking to, because they are all interested in solving the business problem in a more holistic fashion. The first hurdle that they hit is one of data, right? Where it resides and how do I bring all of it together and how do I organize it and keep it in a manner which lends itself for analytics. I do believe that the data engineering value propositions will be something that we will focus on in the coming quarters, right, on how we build it.
Our investments will also therefore go in that direction.
Thank you. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rajan Sethuraman for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Yeah. Hey, thanks. I think I kind of touched upon pretty much what has been the highlights for the quarter. I think in response to questions, I also talked about the focus areas. I do believe that there is a good amount of opportunity. While there is some of the concern around the macroeconomic headwinds and what it might mean to spending on specific sectors, our thinking on this matter is that as long as we stay very closely aligned with initiatives that can create real impact for our clients, right, on the P&L, either in terms of revenue growth or margin enhancement, we believe that we will continue to be very relevant even for any reduced spending, right, that the clients might do.
I mean, at the end of the day, the idea is that clients are not gonna completely stop data analytics initiatives even if the going gets tough, but rather they will reorient their spending to the right kind of initiatives. We witnessed this during the pandemic as well, and we have seen instances where clients chose to continue to work with us on specific initiatives, right, that were very relevant and important for them in those turbulent times. Our thinking and orientation at this time is to continuously look for those kind of value propositions that will continue to stay relevant, even if there are headwinds, right, that our clients experience in their own context.
A lot of our investment, our hiring, the development that we are doing internally is all oriented and geared in that direction. We believe that we are on a good wicket in terms of how we are shaping up. Also we see that even if there are some headwinds and there is some sluggishness, that will also be a good time to double down and build on the kind of capabilities that will be necessary to help address concerns emerging out of that slump, right, whenever that happens. We will continue to invest aggressively on capability building as well as relationship building, right, in the coming quarters. We believe that that'll be the right approach from a long-term growth perspective.
Broadly, those are the thoughts that I had, right, in terms of how we are looking at the coming quarters. Raj, if you want to add anything, please go ahead and we can close after that.
Nothing else, Rajan. I think we pretty much covered most of what we had to during the course of the call, and I think you've summarized it very well. Nothing else to add on to that.
Great. Thanks, Raj.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Latent View Analytics Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.