Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'll now hand the conference over to Ms. Asha Gupta from EY Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Neha. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Q1 FY25 earnings call of LatentView Analytics Limited. The results and presentations have already been mailed to you, and you can also view them on the website www.latentview.com. In case anyone does not have the copy of press release or presentation, or you are not marked in the 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, Rajan Sethuraman, whom we will be referring to as Rajan, and we have the CFO of the company, Rajan Venkatesan, whom we will be referring to as Raj. This is just to avoid the confusion while doing the transcript.
We will start the call with a brief update on the business, which will be given by Rajan, and then followed by financials given by Raj. As usual, I would like to remind you that anything that is mentioned on the call that reflects any outlook for the future or which can be construed as forward-looking statements must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties that we face. These risks and uncertainties are included, but not limited to, what we have mentioned in the prospectus filed with SEBI and subsequent annual reports that you can find on our website. Having said that, I will now hand over the floor to Rajan. Over to you, Rajan.
Thanks, Asha, and thank you all for joining the first quarter earnings call for financial year 25. I hope you all had a chance to go through our presentation and the press release. Very happy to report that we have started off the year on a fairly strong note. As you all know, the macro environment continues to be challenging, and you would have already started looking at results that have been shared by other public-listed companies in the IT services space. We are very happy that we were able to grow our revenue sequentially on a quarter-on-quarter basis, 4%+, and also on a year-on-year basis, 21%+.
Our EBITDA margin came in a tad lower in comparison to the last quarter, mainly on account of wage revisions and costs that we had incurred on visas for people in India as well as people in the U.S. In general, I would say that the growth continues to be a little on a muted note, given the sluggish macroeconomic scenario. A lot of the growth that we are witnessing is coming from work that we do for our existing accounts, both existing as well as new groups and new stakeholders.
New logos, I would say, are still harder to come by, and even when we win that, it is starting off on a much smaller scale in comparison to what we were experiencing maybe a year and a half back. That being said, there is a lot of interest, especially on the back of new technologies in relation to artificial intelligence and GenAI and the predictive analytics work, and there are a lot of conversations that are moving in the right direction. We did win quite a few marquee logos in this quarter, and some of them we were able to start off at a fairly large clip of close to $500,000 or more.
We saw such traction with some of our existing accounts as well, where we kicked off fairly substantial engagements for existing as well as new stakeholders. However, I would say that in general, when new initiatives get kicked off, we see that the quantum and the size of the initiatives tend to be a bit more experimental and smaller. Specifically on the GenAI front, there has been a lot of experimentation that has happened over the last 12-18 months. And in our recent conversations, we hear a lot more positive orientation in terms of now moving from pilot and experimentation to production. Many of them are contemplating how they prioritize some of the initiatives that have proven successful in the experiment stage.
And there are quite a few conversations where they are looking to move to the next stage of production. At this point in time, our GenAI pipeline is also looking fairly strong, over $4 million worth of conversations that are at a closure stage, and many more in the top stages of the funnel. In general, I would say that the signals, the positive signals, we see a bit more of that in North America. Europe, I would say, is still a little behind the curve on that one. But in Europe as well, there are quite a few conversations with larger Fortune 500 companies, which are in the GenAI space, as well as in the predictive analytics space.
The other important update I have for you is that, we have now completed the acquisition of Decision Point. The integration efforts are on in full swing. The teams, both from Decision Point as well as LatentView, are now working in a fairly collaborative fashion in terms of taking value propositions and solutions that each of us have into our existing and prospective clients as well. There are at least 6 conversations where we believe that the joint capabilities will be of significant importance in terms of new work that these accounts are looking to do.
At this time, I would say that, for the year, full year, depending on how things pan out, in the second half of the year, we could see, a growth of, somewhere, definitely, close to what we did, last year, which is in the 16%-18% range. But depending on how the second half of the year pans out, it could, it could come in much better than, what we saw in the last year. We are continuing to double down on a bunch of investments that, we have started making in our marketing analytics, horizontal, partnership with, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, the NVIDIA partnership, and so on.
At this point in time, we are also looking at repositioning some of the investments that we have in the front end to the channels and the areas where we are seeing more traction, be it in terms of the partnership or be it in terms of the specific capabilities that we intend to take into the market. Overall, I would say that there is a general sense of positivity and optimism at this time within the client ecosystem that we are in conversations with, and that is also reflected in the sentiment within the company in terms of what we can accomplish this year.
With those opening remarks, let me hand it over to Raj to take you through some of the financial details and in a bit more details.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Rajan. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Q1 FY 2025 earnings call. As Rajan mentioned, we actually started the year on a positive note with a strong performance in Q1. For the quarter ended June 30th, we closed with revenues of close to about INR 179 crore, which reflects a 4.2% sequential growth and a 21.1% growth on a year-on-year basis, right? Most of this growth, as already explained by Rajan, was driven by, I would say, existing relationships that we've had.
But I think, just to add to what Rajan also said, while some of the new logos that we have signed up for, while they may not have started off on a fairly large sort of contract value, each of these logos, I think at least 3 of them, that we've added in this particular quarter, have the potential to become fairly large-sized opportunities if we deliver the initial piece of work well, right? So, these are, you know, 2 of them are Fortune 500 logos, of the 3 that I spoke about. So definitely, from a logo addition standpoint, these are the right type of logos, logos that we would like to work for. So that's a, that's again, a positive aspect.
On the existing relationships, again, bulk of this revenue increase came from our clients in the technology vertical. But more importantly, I think this quarter, we also saw a good amount of expansion that happened in the BFSI vertical, where some of our existing relationships, we've been able to expand into those relationships and really sort of grow them, and that is reflected in the contribution that you see from the BFSI sector as well. For this particular quarter, BFSI contributed close to about 10.4%, as opposed to the 8% or so levels in the previous quarter, right? Our other income for this particular quarter stood at INR 17.4 crores, an increase of 10% on a sequential basis.
This increase was primarily driven on account of a Forex loss that we had to book in the last quarter, which was offset by a gain that I would say or a lesser loss in this particular quarter. The quantum of the loss that we booked in the last quarter was significantly higher. That number has come up. These losses are not operational in nature. They are more losses that are driven by intercompany or group company loans that we've granted to our subsidiaries overseas. The corresponding effect of which is booked under other comprehensive income. So there is one leg that gets accounted for in other income, and the other leg goes to other comprehensive income.
And so this particular quarter, that loss being lower, we were able to see an expansion in other income. Our EBITDA for this quarter stood at INR 38.3 crores, a decrease of about 5.2% in absolute terms on a quarter-on-quarter basis, but on a year-on-year basis, grew by about 36.3%. As indicated last quarter, and we had, we sort of emphasized on this, when we did our last earnings call, wage hike in the range of 10% for India and about 4%-5% were given out for overseas regions, were given out effective April 1. And that did have an impact on our margins for this particular for Q1.
Incrementally, there were higher spends owing to cyclical visa costs that are typically booked in Q1, where the H-1B lottery happens, and the U.S. government fees and the attorney fees paid in relation to applying for these H-1B visas is typically booked in Q1, and that had an impact as well. On top of that, we also had incremental advisory and professional, you know, charges on account of the acquisition that we closed in this particular quarter. The incremental visa, plus the professional and advisory fee, contributed about 0.9% of the sort of EBITDA contraction, and wage hike contributed about 1.2% of the EBITDA contraction.
So of the 2.1%, 1.2% came from wage hikes and zero point eight percent came from higher visa and professional and consultancy charges. The second bucket, which is the visa and the professional fees, we expect that we will not be incurring at similar levels in the quarters to come, and so therefore the impact of that should definitely go away in the following quarters. Our PAT for this quarter, right, stood at about 38.9%, reflecting a decline of thirteen point nine percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis, although it grew by 18.2% on a year-on-year basis.
One of the primary reasons for the decline in PAT, of course, besides the drop in EBITDA that we've already discussed, is attributable to the 10AA benefit that for our SEZ unit going away. And this is something again that we had indicated in our last earnings call. Incrementally, the last year, we also had the benefit of fairly large exercise, you know, tax breaks that we got on account of exercise of ESOPs in our U.S. subsidiary. So the full benefit of which was almost the 80% benefit of which was booked in the previous year itself.
We only have a residual 20% benefit that we're able to book in this year, and that too, we will be doing that on a staggered basis, you know, on a prorated basis over the course of the year. Both these two main heads are at ETR for this year, and this should be fairly reflective of how our ETR will be going forward as well; it will be between 24%-25% going forward, right? So that said, and we believe we are already at those levels in Q1, so this effective tax rate will continue going forward.
In terms of industry, you know, our vertical offerings, technology continues to be the strongest vertical as has been the case in historical periods, contributing about 70.9% in the current quarter, followed by industrials at 11.5%. Financial services that I already mentioned contributed 10.4%, followed by consumer and retail. Now, please bear in mind that consumer and retail for this quarter, specific quarter, does not include any results of Decision Point, neither does the financial results of the company. Like Rajan mentioned, we, while we closed this acquisition as of July 1, we will be consolidating the results of Decision Point with our results starting Q2, right?
The following quarter is when you will see the full impact of the merger or of the acquisition. We expect that the synergies that we will be able to generate owing to the acquisition should have a positive impact on the consumer vertical. Not just the consumer vertical, we are seeing significant traction in industrials as well as financial services. Technology to a lesser extent, but definitely a significant joint go-to-market efforts are underway in consumer, industrials, and financial services, and we believe that there will be significant synergies that should come from the acquisition itself. In terms of the overall geographical split, US continues to be the dominant geography contributing 93.7%. Europe is still at 1.3%, continues to be fledgling, right?
But one of the good news is, again, with Europe is, you know, we are adding several small marquee logos, right? Each of which we hope to convert and make them into, you know, fairly large opportunities. But still, the traction in terms of the deal size continues to be fairly small and sluggish as far as Europe is concerned. Overall, our balance sheet continues to be strong, excluding the IPO money, the cash and cash equivalents stood at about INR 1,133 crores as of 13th June.
However, with the acquisition of Decision Point that was concluded on July first, close about INR 330 crores of the cash balance will be invested for closing this acquisition, and therefore, you will see some impact of the lower, you know, investment balance that we will carry on the other income, you will be able to see that in the following quarter. In terms of our overall head count, we stood at about 1,261 at the end of the quarter. We are very happy to announce that we've honored our commitments to onboard all our campus hires as of, as we speak right now. We onboarded close to about 60+ people in this quarter, right?
But while on a net basis, you will see a decline in the head count for this quarter compared to the last quarter. That is also attributable to typical attrition that we see in Q1. As we announce our wage hike as well as bonuses, we do see a spike in attrition in Q1, and that's been the trend historically as well, and this year is no different. In terms of the outlook, I think Rajan's already spoken about the revenue outlook. In terms of the EBITDA margin, while we clocked close to about 21.5% in this particular quarter, we do expect some of those one-off costs in relation to visa as well as the other professional charges to go away in the following quarter.
We also do anticipate that as revenue continues to grow through the course of this year, we will be able to see some of that operating leverage kick in, and so we should be back at those 23% odd levels by Q3 is the estimate at this point in time. With that, I'm gonna be handing it back to Asha, and we can open up 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 their 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 Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Yes, gentlemen, thank you so much for the opportunity. My first question is on our progress that we've made on GenAI. I think you mentioned that we have been sort of looking at a lot of deals that are now getting converted into pilot. I just wanted to get a sense on what is the nature of these deals. Is it more towards data engineering, cleaning up data for enterprises who are looking to develop their own LLMs? If you can just help us get a sense on that. Another question is on the growth in our top 20. That seems to be a bit muted this quarter. Most of the growth has come from ex of top 20 accounts. If you can just highlight the reason for the same.
Yeah. Hey, Vimal, thanks for the question. I'll answer the first one, and then I'll have Raj address the second question. The GenAI opportunities that we are pursuing, they tend to be across 2, 3 different categories, right? On one hand, we have opportunities related to analyzing unstructured data, data that exists in the form of contract documents, process flow charts, and the like. And getting insights out of that, right, in terms of how contracts are set up or how they are performing, what kind of discrepancies are there. In general, any kind of unstructured content, right? Be it around procurement, be it around marketing, sales, that's one type of work that we are doing.
The second category of work is generating new content, and this new content could be content that is used for a promotional campaign, for example. These could be content for personalized marketing and discount programs, for example, right? So this is the second category where GenAI is being used to generate new content that is personalized and tailored, right, depending on the context. And the third type of work using core GenAI solutions is analyzing structured data. And this could be data from the client organization, supply chain, or from their marketing department, or it could be from sales or customer experience, even from HR.
That is a very interesting conversation that we are having right now, in terms of using GenAI to improve the employee experience, and define what we call the employee segment of one, right? Looking at employee lifetime value. So this is the third category, where you are pointing the GenAI, LLM, the large language models, at structured data, and answering questions about that data, as well as any analytics that I use on the data, without any kind of hallucination, okay? Which means that you're using only the data from the enterprise to answer those questions. So those are the three type of work that we are doing.
A lot of it, is currently, work that we are currently doing at least, is more on the analytics side of it, as opposed to the data engineering side of it. However, we do see that, some of the conversations as they move from a pilot POC to a larger enterprise kind of scale application, it'll be necessary to bring together data from across the enterprise, both structured and unstructured, and create the right kind of a foundation before you can, apply the LLM on top of it. So that's broadly the kind of conversation that we are having at the time.
Rajan, just one, one follow-up there.
Yeah.
Talking about getting insights from the data that you already have and analyzing structured data and helping inter-departmental movement of the same, how is it different from the work that we did in the pre-GenAI era?
So the GenAI enables you to do this at a much faster, rapid scale and turnaround. There is a huge amount of productivity uplift that we can see in terms of performing the nature of the work. It is not necessary for you to go into writing the SQLs, in some instances, even the modeling. For example, the latest launch from Azure, right, the AI Studio that they have launched, that allows you to actually use predefined components that are available for you to do a lot of this work. And without the need for complicated assembly of the different components, as well as iterating through all of them, right, in terms of what works.
The GenAI platforms and the technologies that are available allow you to execute many of these in a seamless fashion, while at the same time getting the benefit both in terms of computational speed and processing power reduction, as well as how you store from a memory standpoint. They are also allowing the use of different types of LLM. You're not bound to one LLM, so therefore, the platforms that are available allow you to play around with different kinds of LLM services.
So basically, if I were to summarize, it's really the speed at which you're able to execute the same type of projects and the options that are available for you to experiment and then figure out the solution, right, that that generates the best kind of response for you with the least amount of cost, both from a computing as well as from a memory standpoint.
Wonderful, sir. Sir, on the top 20, Ex top 20 client growth, if you could just answer that one.
Yeah. Yeah. So specifically on this question, right? Like, you will see that actually our growth in the top five as well as the top ten, right? I think there has been growth in the top, in the top 10, I think, you are specifically referring to the 10-20 bucket. Is that correct, sir?
I'm just looking at the top 20 and then Ex of top 20. That's all.
Yeah. So you will see that the top 20, right? I mean, so if you look at the top 5 and the top 10, I would say that there has been growth in those buckets. Specifically in the top customers that sit between 11 and 20, right? There were, I would say, a few one-off projects that we had executed, and some of these were stitched together in Q3 and Q4, right? Which we delivered, and once we delivered those pieces of work, you know, we didn't have any follow-on work or they didn't get extended, for instance, right? Or we didn't get signed on additional work on the back of some of these one-off projects that we had executed.
So that is primarily the reason why you would see a small dip in the 10-20 bucket. But outside of that, you are right. There have been close to about 8 odd new accounts or new deals that new clients that we have signed on in Q1, each of which contributed a fairly meaningful number, but they are still not very, very sizable in terms of their overall, you know, as clients, they're not sizable clients, right? But there was a meaningful chunk of revenue that we were able to generate from some of these new new logo signings, which also meant that the growth came outside of the top 20. So your assessment is correct.
Sir, last question. If you can just help us quantify the M&A advisory fees for the quarter.
So the M&A advisory fee for the quarter would be close to about, in terms of rupees, that you know, we would have paid close to about 9 million. I think you know, the number will be between INR 9 million to about INR 1 crore that we would have paid in this quarter.
Okay. Thank you so much, sir, and all the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address the questions from all the participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Jain from Anand Rathi Group. Please go ahead.
Sir, I missed the revenue growth outlook. So one was why Q1 was slightly slower, and then in terms of demand, what are you seeing in the near term, like two, three years?
Right. The growth outlook for the year, Mohit, it continues to stand at the 17%-18% mark that we had talked about. In fact, if I take a look at the probability-weighted pipeline that I have, that number looks better, but some of them are still at the 25% and 50% probability. So we are, we just want to see how this pans out, right, in terms of actual conversions coming through. But at this time, there is confidence in terms of getting to that 18% kind of a number, right, from year-on-year for the full year. Quarter one itself has been, a bit of a slower start in comparison to what we anticipated, when we were in quarter four of last year.
But that is largely because some of the deals that we were expecting to commence, commenced a little later in the quarter. So instead of getting started in, in the month of April itself, we have had to wait till, end of May or even, June, in terms of the work itself getting started. So we are seeing that that uptick from that will be there, and we also see some closures happening, in this quarter itself, which will contribute to this quarter and beyond. So, yeah, so that's the overall commentary. I mean, con- reasonable confidence on about 17-18% for the full year. Could get better if things, unravel and, get, you know, punctuated faster.
This was primarily in high tech verticals, being slower deal amounts?
No, high tech has been okay, I would say. In fact, I think, the sluggishness has been, in some of the other sectors. You know, in industrials, in consumer, in retail, some conversations for example, these have taken a bit longer. Overall, with technology, we are seeing, the traction seems to be picking up at this time.
Okay. Now, earlier we were looking for around 23% margin for the full year. But now your outlook is 23 by end of the year, like fourth quarter?
So I'd say if we get to the top end of the 18%-20% type growth, so while we are projecting 16%-18%, Mohit, if we get to the... You know, we're able to go beyond the 18% growth for this year, I think we should be able to, on a full year basis, also get to the 23%. But ultimately, it all depends on the. Because most of the investments on the SG&A side are all fully baked in, right? I don't think there will be any incremental investment that will kick in now. So most of the growth that we will deliver will all sort of flow through to the EBITDA.
So if we are able to stick to the higher end of the guidance and maybe go a little beyond, we should be able to deliver a 23% on a full year basis as well. But right now, our sort of comfort level is on guiding that we will be back to the 23% by Q3. And then Q4, if we are able to do slightly better numbers, then it could be even higher in Q4.
This is without including acquisition?
That's correct. This is all just organic. So inorganic, we will start guiding once we start consolidating their numbers, Mohit, from Q2 onwards. At this point in time, all the projections that we are giving is all organic.
Right. And they are operating at 30% kind of margins, right?
So they will be, yeah, they are operating at 30%. That's correct.
We should take into account whatever the consolidation happens?
That, that's correct. Yeah.
That's all good. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from Phillip Capital India. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Good evening, Rajan and Raj. First question is on BFSI. So BFSI has been growing very well, so congratulations on that. So if you can elaborate on what sort of projects you guys are winning, and what's the competition like, and which are the end clients in BFSI, given that BFSI is such a large vertical? So if you can elaborate, that will be helpful.
Yeah. Hi, Karan. Good evening. The focus for us in BFSI till date has been largely related to the FinTech and the non-traditional space, right? So, trading platforms, payment mechanisms, investment, asset management, investment companies, right? These are the ones that we are focused on. While we are currently pursuing opportunities with a few banks and insurance companies, they are yet to take off or justify. Okay? I mean, so therefore, there isn't much happening, right, in that space. All of the action has been in the other areas that I talked about. And there it has been a fairly broad spectrum.
There's quite a bit of work that we have been doing around just the fraud, risk, financial compliance, analytics type of work. There is work that we do quite a bit related to customer experience and marketing analytics. There are projects that have been kicked off on the underlying data engineering and data platform requirements for the asset management companies. We are also doing work related to some GenAI areas. In fact, one of the conversations that we are now having with a bank is about using GenAI for analyzing the filings that companies do with the exchanges and the central authority, and how can you use GenAI to come up with the financial analysis of those companies, right?
So that's the kind of problem statement that we're examining. So fairly broad spectrum of work, but I would say that till date, it has still been largely in the non-traditional space. We are spending time and effort on the banking and the insurance space. Expectation is that we will have a few that we'll be working with, right, in the next 2-3 quarters timeframe.
So, Rajan, just a follow-up here. So the growth, you know, sequential growth has been, you know, in the range of high teens, or even more than that. So do you expect this momentum to continue in BFSI?
Related to, I mean, the overall growth of the company, right?
No, I'm, I'm talking specifically for BFSI. For last three quarters, it's, the growth is almost 20% on an average. So do you expect this to continue, or it will moderate?
No, no, we are expecting it to continue. In fact, we are expecting that it should get better in the coming quarters. In fact, one of the discussion points that we had in the board meeting today was further doubling down on the domain expertise that will bring even more domain-specific solutions. I mean, I talked about the broad range of areas where we are working, but there are a few specific value propositions that we have identified ourselves, wherein we want to double down even more. So there will be some investments that we'll be making on shoring up on the domain expertise in that area. And that, coupled with also using GenAI in some of the other areas with the traditional sectors, we are expecting to see more traction in BFSI.
If you remember, Karan, BFSI was one of the areas that we had identified even during our IPO, in terms of doubling down and building out, for the opportunity. While the market has been a bit sluggish, we also used the opportunity to understand, where we are strong and what we can play at. And at this point in time, there is increasing confidence, right, that we'll be able to pursue opportunities that are coming our way in that space.
Okay. So it's a bit intriguing because, you are also, you know, lowering the guidance. Last time when we spoke, you mentioned about 18%-20% kind of a growth. Right now, you're talking about 16%-18%. Given that, you know, most of your, you know, large verticals like BFSI and technology, where you have, you know, spoken about positive outlook. So where, where is the stress coming in your portfolio?
No, I would say that the sector where we are concerned at this point in time is really only retail. We are seeing positive momentum in all of them. In terms of just the overall growth trajectory that we are indicating, we are just taking into account that while the conversations are underway and there is a great deal of interest, it does take time for clients to sign up, even for the first pilot or initiative. And even when they do that, they are starting off a little small and not at the kind of ticket sizes, right, that we were anticipating. So I'm just being cognizant of all of that is happening.
As I said earlier, right, during my opening remarks, if things start getting better in the second half of the year, we would be able to do much better than the 17%-18%, right, that we're talking about at this time.
Okay. And last is on Europe. So Europe, basically, we had invested in leadership as well as in S&M in the past, but we are yet to see, you know, substantial results there. So what's the update on Europe?
So Europe has seen a tough situation. I mean, in general, the degree of conservatism that prevails in Europe, given the current macroeconomic scenario, is definitely a lot more in comparison to the U.S. On top of that, Europe is also a tougher market to break into from a relationship standpoint. The good news for us, though, is that at this point in time, there are at least half a dozen logos that, you know, we have either signed up or we are on the verge of signing up, which are all of the right type. It has taken quite a bit of investment and effort on our part, even to get the first initiative, right, agreed, agreed there.
But all of them are talking about how the relationship can scale if we do the right thing. On our end, I would say that the investments that we did at the front end in the sales and the business development, some of them panned out for us and some of them didn't, in terms of personal caliber, what they brought to the table, the solutioning approach that they were able to employ versus what the client was looking for and what we had to offer. So we are also learning from all of that experience, and we are adjusting the model.
Some of our people who we had earlier deployed from a sales perspective are helping with the solutioning, because that's where they're able to play a more impactful role. So the expectation is that with all of this, we should start seeing some uptick. Raj mentioned that we are currently less than 2%, 1.6 or so, in terms of contribution. If things go well, even in the remainder of the year, I would expect that contribution to double from the current fiscal year. We should be approaching the 3% plus mark in terms of overall contribution as we close this year. And if we have the right foundation clients, many of them do spend money on analytics, and we would expect to grow with them in the coming quarters.
Okay. Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Thank you, Karan.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nilesh Shah from Julius Baer. Please go ahead.
Hi. Are you able to hear me?
Yeah, Nilesh, go ahead.
Hi, hi. Hi. Yeah, you know, just to sort of zoom out a bit, I'm just looking at the industry structure as you had, you know, yeah, you know, structured it in your DRHP, where you had sort of broken down the data and, and, and the new pool, right? In these sort of four parts. You had enterprise data, then, you know, then these sort of three parts that follow from that, which are descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. Now, I just want to take your perspective, right? What, yeah, you know, if, if, if you were to compare how the market was, you know, before the advent of Gen AI and now, right, how do you see, yeah, you know, the, yeah, you know, the market shifting into these different pies?
The concern that we have is that, yeah, you know, do you see a trend that more of the customer mindshare and dollars are going towards the data engineering side, right? Yeah, you know, because you have a lot more data that can be processed. And the second bit is that, are the later parts of that value chain, where companies like yourself would operate, you know, do you see any signs that companies may choose to either do them in-house or use some of these tools that scale, that may sort of curtail the size of projects that firms like yourself could get? If you could share your thoughts on that, it would help. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Nilesh. You are right in the sense that, as the industry evolves and the maturity of companies go up in terms of how they use data analytics, they will pursue more complex and fuzzy problems, which require them to bring in data from across the enterprise, outside the enterprise, necessitating a more sophisticated data platform. So there is definitely going to be a ton of work that happens on the data engineering and the data platform. And this is something that we are, we have anticipated, and we have prepared for as well. I mean, today, about 20% of our revenue comes from doing that type of work.
We are expecting that percentage could go up in the coming quarters, in the coming years. In fact, one of the things that we discussed in some amount of detail in the board today was about doubling down even more with the specific partnerships that we have. Adding people to front end the partnership channel directly in the market in the US. And also hiring people on the sales business development side, where it kind of connects with the CIO, CTO organizations that will be undertaking the central data platform type of initiative. So that is definitely happening. Now, having said that, the data engineering and all of this work is not something that any organization would do in isolation. It is always as a means to an end...
And the end objectives typically will be in the use cases that they seek to indicate. And these use cases, while they will benefit from the advent of GenAI and other kinds of tooling and technologies available, the scope and the opportunity there is very vast. I mean, most organizations, even with using some of the tooling that is available, will only be able to raise themselves up to a certain kind of a level playing field. And when organizations do that, all that happens is the level playing field changes for a broad spectrum of companies, right? Within a technology like GenAI will accelerate that process of creating the level playing field.
But then you will have to look at the next level of sophistication and advancing in terms of how you use the information. The underlying analytics that will need to be done, the predictive, prescriptive type of work, the underlying analytics around connecting that between the business use case and the decision making, that will still be there, to quite some extent. I mean, I gave you the example of using Gen AI to look at financial statements and come up with investment thesis, right? On how the companies are performing, as an example. Another recent example that we have encountered is how we can use generative AI to actually do fairly complex market entry and market positioning type of analysis.
Now, we have been having conversations with a company that does this kind of work. But all that means is that that tool and the technology will create a new level playing field with the work moving on to a more sophisticated plane, right, in terms of what you can do with with that information. So our philosophy and our expectation on this one is that there will be a lot more work that will happen on the predictive, prescriptive analytics side. Some of the simpler stuff though, right, which is the look-back analytics and the, and the business insight generation type of work, that could get commoditized and automated using the technology, because that is well understood. You can avoid the problems of hallucination and stuff and so on, right, in in those areas.
So, that will happen. But, in terms of the decision making and the optimization, the tooling and technology will create more opportunities to get on into a more advanced, type of approach.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pranay Khandelwal from Alpha Alternatives. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted you to talk a little about the products that we have and also the product that Decision Point has, BeagleGPT. How's the adoption for those products? And if you can give a breakup also of the revenue from products versus revenue from services.
Yeah. So hey, Pranay. I just want to, I mean, at the outset say that, we don't consider what we have built so far as products. I mean, I would best classify them as, accelerators and solutions, because we are not yet operating in, you know, any kind of a license, revenue or a subscription type of a model. Whatever we have built, we are typically using them in the provisioning of the services, right, that we bring to the table. So I talked about LASER or GenAI for, sorry, LASER or AI Penpal, earlier, right? These are the GenAI products, also the solutions that we have, which help, analyze either unstructured data or, generate, new content.
Similarly, our Smart Innovation solution, our ConnectedView supply chain solution, I would say all of these are in the nature of solutions and accelerators that create a fairly good starting point for us, as well as nonlinearity in terms of effort that we need to expend. For example, recently we completed a significant migration project for a large media retailer. Media retailer means that they are a retail company, but they primarily use television as the channel, right, for their business. It was a significant amount of migration work, and we were able to almost cut down 60% of the effort required using our MigrateMate solution.
However, none of these are solutions that we can sell or give away as a product, and we still need to be in the mix in order to make use of the solution to deliver the services. On the other hand, BeagleGPT, I would say, is a product. They have been able to actually sell them, sell BeagleGPT as a subscription, as a license model. So it, it's a bit of a first of a kind for us. They have also integrated it very effectively with the Microsoft Teams environment, so therefore deployment and usage also becomes fairly simple.
There will be learnings for us as well in terms of, taking some of those components and then making it possible for us to, maybe evolve the solutions that we have, right, to a product level. At this point in time, though, we are kind of fairly clear that, overall strategy and philosophy for us is that we will continue to be a bespoke, analytics consulting and services organization. Product revenue, if any, will be marginal in the scheme of things, and we will be using that more for creating the nonlinearity and the entry point, right, in terms of conversations. Beagle GPT has good potential. It's already generated, $1 million of revenue, right, for Decision Point in the last year. And this year, if conversations are anything to go by, it could generate, even more revenue.
So we will continue to double down on that and then make further investments to see how we can continue to evolve the product as well.
All right. That will be all. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Agam Shah, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. So most of my questions have been answered. Quick question, on the opening remarks, you said that, in terms of client, you have added new logos, but it's taking time to convert spending from them. So when you foresee, when you know, the spending level increasing or getting good business from them, can you elaborate on the same?
Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Agam. I think it's a, it's a matter of time. What has happened is, given the general uncertainty around the macroeconomic environment, spending, discretionary spending, that, clients, have kicked off, have focused more on the newer areas and technologies, you know, like the generative AI type of solutions. And obviously, in those areas, they are being cautious that, they seem to understand what the technology is about, what it can do for them. Therefore, the pilots that they have kicked off have been, smaller, and, and this has been the case, you know, even with, larger organizations.
I'm expecting that as these pilots yield results and they can see some direct benefits, right, either on the top line, bottom line, or the metrics, then the appetite for expanding this will come in. And we are also seeing softening in terms of the interest rates and potentially, you know, likely the macroeconomic uncertainty itself unwinding. So it's just a question of time. I mean, our expectation at this point in time is that the second half of this year itself could see some of that uptick happening as clients move from smaller to larger initiatives.
Even in these new areas, some of the clients with whom we have been working for a longer period of time, where there is a relationship, three years or more, they have already taken that kind of an approach. One of the largest accounts that we work with, we were able to win a $1 million generative AI engagement, right, this year already, and we are executing on that. So I'm expecting that uptick could happen, even in a quarter or so.
Great. So just a last follow-up. So basically from what I understand is, all levers are on pace in terms of hiring, in terms of investments, technology, everything. You just need the macro environment to support you, right?
That is, that is correct. I mean, the good news is that even in this sluggish macroeconomic environment, we have been able to grow our existing accounts and bring in new logos, as well. So that is giving us confidence that, that plus the fact that, there are multiple conversations and opportunities that we have in the pipeline, that gives us confidence that once the sentiment improves a bit in terms of starting to invest, for the future, things could pick up pace, pretty fast.
Okay. Okay. That's, that's it from my end. Wish you the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Narayan, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Am I audible?
Go ahead.
Sir, my question is in the field of risk management. So what are the major risks and challenges that you foresee, and how are you planning to mitigate them in the near future?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Narayan. It's a very broad question, of course. I mean, there are risks all the way from strategic type of risks to what one might encounter on the IT and the cybersecurity space. From a business standpoint, right, if I were to just look at business risks, I think we typically look at two or three areas. One is the risk related to general the demand environment and the macroeconomic scenario, and this is what we have been seeing playing out over the last almost six quarters, right? When things have softened up and we are seeing that the growth rates are much lower in comparison to what we were anticipating, right, before the downturn started, right?
There, the best defense is to keep investing in the right kind of capabilities, and the tooling and the expertise so that our solutions and expertise make sense even in that type of an environment. And I believe that that is the approach that has actually stood us well in the last 4-6 quarters, where we have continued to grow, albeit at a lower rate in comparison to what we were doing earlier. But we have still managed to grow during those periods, right, in terms of quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth.
Another big risk that you typically see from a business standpoint is just the pace at which the technology is evolving, and the need to keep abreast of those technologies, technology changes, and make sure that we are not only aware and we are able to learn all of that stuff, but we are also able to incorporate it in performing the work that we do for our clients... and bring the best and the newest innovations and ideas that emerge from the advent of those technologies. I think generative AI is a great example of that. And, in fact, I was talking to somebody earlier today, and they were asking me: Do you have a generative AI practice?
I was responding to them, saying that, for the kind of work that we do and the industry that we are in, we cannot say that we have a generative AI practice, because everything that we do has generative AI embedded, right, in it in some form or the other. Whether it is around generative AI core solutions or generative AI as a wrapper in the solutions and the services, or whether improving our own productivity as an organization, right, and the performance of the work. So I think that's the second risk, and we need to stay completely clued in, and then we need to be fast and adapting to all the new technology changes that are coming.
The third is, in general, this area also lends itself to rapid commoditization and automation, which means that we cannot just keep doing work that we did in the past and hope that clients will continue to pay top dollar for that type of work. We have to continuously keep innovating and finding new problems, more complex and fuzzy problems. I talked about how any new technology raises the level playing field, but the good thing is that it also raises and increases the visibility that we have. It's pretty much like climbing a mountain. The higher you go, the more becomes visible to you and therefore doubles that visibility, right?
Understanding that we try and bring to the context, that we are aware of more nuanced problems and approaches and solutions, and we can take them to the table. So I would say broadly from a business standpoint, those are the things. I mean, I'm not talking about other risks, like geographic risk, client diversification risk, and, I mean, there are any number of reasons. Of course, cybersecurity itself is a fairly big area in terms of... Because we deal with data, and we have to be very careful about that. But those are all, you know, we obviously have awareness of what is happening, and now we are putting in the right kind of mechanisms. I'm assuming that you are talking about business risk rather than those other types.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Hasmukh Visharia from Tata Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks for the opportunity. My question is around the guidance and risk to that guidance. So, just wanted to understand that for the lower end of the guidance, what sort of deal momentum you have considered? So for the existing book of business, from the existing book of business, how much of the revenue growth can come from, and how much is built in from the potential, let's say, deal conversion? Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Yeah. So I would say that right now, if I just look at the confirmed revenue that we have, which means these are all deals that have been signed and switched up, as well as the high probability extensions that we are looking at, that itself amounts to about 10%+ growth, okay? 10%-12% growth will come just from all the confirmed work and the high potential extensions that we have. On top of that, there are other projects where extensions are feasible, and in addition to that, we have almost $45 million pipeline for this year itself, meaning that this is revenue that can convert in this year if all the stars align.
Now, of course, the $45 million pipeline, the opportunities are at various stages of the funnel, and we have assumed a certain kind of conversion and probability to arrive at the guidance that we have given. If things move faster, I mean, all these are real opportunities, which have a non-zero probability of conversion, anywhere from 10% and above. Some of them could be at 25%, 50%, and so on. So, the pace and the velocity at which these deals will move through the funnel and the actual conversion is what will determine whether we are able to go past the higher end of the guidance I think.
Got it. Got it. The thought process behind the question was basically you have talked about macro improving from H2 onwards. If that, let's say, gets pushed by a quarter or two, whether there is any risk to the guidance is what I wanted to understand. Thanks.
I don't think the lower end of the guidance will get impacted by that. We will be able to deliver. I mean, anyways, the range that we are given is fairly narrow. We're talking about 16%-18%. At this point in time, I would say that that eighteen eighteen percent is fairly we are confident of that, right? Even without any improvement in the macro economic scenario. If the macro scenario improves, then we could go well past the 18% guidance.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Murarka, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello. Keeping our growth trajectory in mind, just wanted to know what type of investment are we looking in terms of talent?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Abhishek. Right now, the main investment that we are looking at is doubling down on a few areas, right? One is around data engineering and the capability, right? As we have said, the data engineering will become even bigger in the coming quarters and the coming years. Today, we have about 250 personnel, right, who do data engineering work, but there is no concentrated expertise in a particular area. I mean, we are kind of agnostic, and we do work across all the hyperscalers. We do work with Snowflake and Databricks. We use a bunch of other tools and technology as well, right, to do the data engineering work. The intention now is to pick one of them, right, and double down.
We have chosen, at this time, Databricks as the, as the partner that we want to really build some serious expertise. There are some specific things that are happening within the Databricks ecosystem as well, in terms of new things that they are introducing. This then, and, and Microsoft Fabric that I mentioned earlier, right? This is the other one in which, we are gonna be making some substantial investments. Some of the hiring and talent additions will be in those areas, just shoring up even more on the Databricks, high-end architecture type of skills, as well as people with, certification, investments that we make into training, people and all that. That is one area.
The other one is related to the domain expertise, that I alluded to, especially in the area of, financial services. I talked about traditional areas of banking and, insurance services, and also the work that we do in other parts of the BFSI spectrum. Likewise, investments that we want to make, around industrials, automotive, around retail as a business, area. These are all the areas where we are looking at adding more domain expert, experts into domain. At this point in time, some of the value propositions that we are able to offer in these areas, they are, more of the generic, horizontal value propositions that we are offering, or like supply chain analytics or marketing analytics. We want to make it a lot more specific and tailored, similar to what we have in the consumer packaged goods space.
Remind people on the call, with CPG, we are focusing on three specific areas. We are focusing on R&D and innovation with our Smart Innovation solution. We are focusing on on-shelf availability, demand forecasting, right, with our ConnectedView supply chain solution. And then we are focusing on revenue growth management, right, with the acquisition of Decision Point. We want to be able to do similar type of value prop and offering, which are very tailored to the particular challenges that BFSI, banks and insurance are similarly right in industrials, or in retail operations. So that is the attempt, and that is where we'll be adding more domain expertise. Hope that answers your question.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Yeah. Thank you. We feel at this time, I mean, in closing, I would say that the start for this year, quarter one, I mean, we—while it is, it's coming at the 4% kind of a mark, plus kind of a mark, and it is a tad lower than what we were hoping for, right? When we were in the second half of the last fiscal. I would say that the signs that we started seeing then are still intact. We would want to be able to accelerate some of the opportunities that we are chasing, and we want to move on to that trajectory, right? Depending on how the external scenario unfolds.
But I would also add that a lot of the investments that we have made, right, either in building the solution or the front-end bandwidth, is what has made all of those conversations and opportunities in the pipeline possible. So at this time, I would say that we will, while we will make some adjustments in terms of repositioning and reprioritizing the investments, right? Moving some of the front-end into the capability and the domain expertise and stuff that I talked about. I think we are well positioned for capitalizing on the opportunities, right? When they do start getting unlocked. There are good signs of that happening in many of the verticals.
We are also energized by the acquisition of Decision Point, and just bringing in more thinking, thought leadership and solutions, right, to the table, specifically in the consumer packaged goods space. In general, when something like this happens, it's also a shot in the arm for the entire organization, and we can see that kind of a momentum and positivity in all that we do. So the expectation is that this year, in the coming quarters, we will see, you know, even greater momentum on not only CPG, but also in the rest of the industries where we are operating. Technology already, we are seeing some good traction. Raj talked about the uptick that we are starting to see in the financial services.
Retail is still a bit sluggish, and I expect that there will be some more pain in that space. But otherwise, in all the other sectors, we are starting to see some momentum, and then we want to ride the momentum, right, in the coming quarters. So overall, positive about how things will pan out, right, over the remainder of the year. Of course, we don't want to run ahead of ourselves, and we want to watch how things unfold, as we make the reprioritization decisions right with the sector investment. With that, I'll hand it to Raj for any further comments that he has.
Yeah. Thanks, Rajan. In closing, I, you know, I'd just like to reiterate, you know, some of the points that Rajan already spoke about. You know, while Q1 did come in at the lower end or slightly below our expectations, and a lot of that was primarily driven by, I would say, delay in signing on some fairly promising or high probability deals, right? But the good news is, we were able to stitch together some of those deals towards the end of Q1, which means that we will be able to see revenue from those deals flowing in, in Q2, right? We've also added close to about eight logos, of which I would say three would be marquee logos.
That gives us the confidence that, you know, if we are able to land some of these POCs or initial pilot projects that we are executing in these marquee logos, we should be able to build on the strength of the relationship over the rest of the period, right? The acquisition of Decision Point unlocks several joint go-to-market pursuits, some of which is in positioning their RGM services to our client side, you know, some of the solutions that we are building to their client side. Also, nearshoring opportunities in LatAm, again, represents fairly significant joint go-to-market, you know, opportunities where, you know, we are positioning resourcing from either Mexico or Chile for clients of LatentView.
This, again, is a new, I would say, dimension or new area of growth for us, which seems to be fairly promising at this point in time. So, all in all, I would say there are several positives to take from the Q1 performance, and also some of the sort of activity that has been happening, even though they've not they may not have necessarily converted into active deal closures. But having said that, you know, as always, we continue to tread with caution, right? I mean, we do understand that while we are confirmed plus the order book will mean that we will be able to deliver a 10%-12% type growth, right, there is still work to be done. There are deals to be closed.
There is also on the account management side, we have to continue ramping up our efforts on mining the existing relationships, right? Some of the large accounts that we have have grown to very, very sizable, you know, values, and therefore, that means that there is increased pressure on us to deliver outstanding quality to these accounts, and we will have to continue to do that, watch our service delivery excellence metrics very, very closely, right? So that would be on the top line side. But as we continue to grow and scale, we will also continue to look for opportunities to drive some of the operating metrics around utilization, on-site offshore ratios.
Look at nearshoring as well as offshoring as opportunities for us to improve the margin profile. Also look at GenAI to do and as well as you know using internal repository of solutions and accelerators to drive efficiency as well as improve pricing, right? So we will continue to work on the operating margin side as well, to improve the margin profile and not just relying on top-line growth. And you know all that I can say is at this point in time, it does seem you know that we are ending Q1 on a fairly strong footing. But having said that, there is still work to be done.
But we are hopeful that we have the right team in place to deliver the sort of growth trajectory that we've indicated on this call. With that, I would want to hand it back to Asha to close the earnings call.
Thank you. On behalf of LatentView Analytics Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.