latent view analyics pvt ltd Management discussions

Management Discussion & Analysis

Global Economy

FY23 witnessed several disruptions caused by Russias invasion of Ukraine, higher interest rates, elevated inflation, increased debt levels, reduced spending, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating geopolitical tensions, and financial turbulence. Given the fragile economic conditions, the global economy is anticipated to remain gloomy and uncertain in the near term. According to International Monetary Funds (IMF) World Economic Outlook (WEO) report April 2023, global economic growth is estimated to decelerate from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.8% in 2023 before rising modestly to 3.0% in 2024. Global inflation soared to a multidecade high of 8.7% in 2022, driven by pent-up demand, protracted supply disruptions, and surges in commodity prices. As a result, central banks rapidly tightened monetary policies to bring inflation back toward their targets and maintain inflation expectations. The global inflation is anticipated to ease at 7.0% and 4.9% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. During the year, the momentum of growth significantly weakened in the US, the EU, and other developed economies, adversely impacting the rest of the global economy.

The US economic growth is projected to decline to 1.6% and 1.1% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The slow pace of growth is primarily led by lower real incomes, high inflation, and consequences of rapid interest rate hikes from nearly 0 in March 2022 to a range of 4.75–5.0% in March 2023 by the Federal Reserve. The interest rates are expected to be in the range of 5.0–5.5% by the end of 2023 in an effort to restore price stability and balance in the U.S economy. Further, the instability in the banking sector in mid-March 2023 has triggered concerns about the viability of the US financial system.

The Eurozone is predicted to fall sharply from 3.5% in 2022 to 0.8% in 2023 before rising to 1.4% in 2024 as the war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Many European countries are anticipated to experience a mild recession, with elevated energy costs, high inflation, and tighter financial conditions depressing household consumption and investment. Growth in emerging and developing countries in Asia is projected to rise in 2023 and 2024 to 5.3% and 5.1%, respectively, after a deeper-than-expected slowdown to 4.4% in 2022 as Chinas reopening boosted the economy. The weak outlook provided by IMF reflects the necessity for stringent policy measures to reduce inflation, the effects of worsening financial conditions, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and expanding geoeconomics fragmentation. Risks to the outlook are substantially tilted to the downside as the likelihood of a hard landing has increased significantly. Policymakers have a narrow path to walk to enhance opportunities and minimize risks. Central banks need to remain steady with their tighter anti-inflation stance, but they also need to be ready to adjust and use their full set of policy instruments, including addressing financial stability concerns as developments demand. Fiscal policymakers should buttress monetary and financial policymakers actions in getting inflation back to target while maintaining financial stability. Making progress toward building a more resilient global economy requires multilateral cooperation measures, including strengthening the global financial safety net, mitigating the costs of climate change, and minimizing the adverse effects of geo-economic fragmentation.

The Global IT Industry Outlook

In FY23, technology continued to play a vital role as organizations accelerated their digital transformation journey to address the requirements of an increasing tech-savvy customer base. The next year will be about sustaining the momentum and future-proofing the business with relevant technologies. While there is a lot of innovation and advancement seen across industries, some technologies that will be game changers are data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), blockchain, big data analytics, internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, low-code-no-code (LCNC) platforms, robotic process automation (RPA), and cyber security, which will fuel growth, stay competitive, and become future-ready. According to Gartners April 2023 release, worldwide IT spending is predicted to touch US$4.6 trillion in 2023, reflecting growth of 5.5% over 2022. Growth will be driven by the software segment as CIOs prioritize spending to capture competitive advantages through increased productivity, automation, and other software-led transformation initiatives. Despite continued global economic turbulence along with high inflation, countries across the globe are anticipated to witness positive IT spending growth in 2023. The IT services segment will continue its growth trajectory through 2024, largely driven by the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market, which is projected to reach over 30% growth this year.

Organizations are increasingly leaning on technology for scaling automation while humanizing UX, streamlining supply chain, enhancing cyber resilience, and delivering their sustainability goals toward becoming purpose-driven businesses. Overall, the IT industry has not just weathered the pandemic-driven disruptions of the past few years, but it has (ourished.

Data & Analytics

In todays digital era, data has become one of the most valuable assets for organizations. The Data & Analytics (D&A) industry is growing rapidly as more organizations adopt data-driven models to streamline their business processes. Organizations are increasingly turning to data analytics to enhance fact-based decision-making, implement data-driven models, and expand data-focused product offerings.

According to MarketWatch Research, the global D&A market is forecast to witness a CAGR of 30.4% between 2022 and 2030. The key trends that will drive growth include the integration of AI and ML; increased usage of big data, cloud computing, IoT, and edge computing; the ability to analyze data in real time; and the adoption of automation and self-service analytics. These trends will assist organizations to capture insights from huge, complex, and unstructured datasets, make more informed and strategic business decisions, predict business outcomes, increase operational effectiveness, and improve customer engagement.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (US$ billions)

	2022	2022	2023	2023	2024	2024
	Spending	Growth (%_	Spending	Growth (%_	Spending	Growth (%_
Data Center Systems	216	13.7	224	3.7	238	6.1
Software	794	8.8	891	12.3	1,008	13.1
Devices	717	-10.7	684	-4.6	759	11.0
IT Services	1,250	3.5	1,364	9.1	1,503	10.2
Communications Services	1,424	-1.8	1,479	3.9	1,536	3.8
Overall IT	4,402	0.5	4,643	5.5	5,043	8.6

Generative AI (GAI) is expected to transfigure business operations and workflows by automating varied functions. It is expected to reduce the turnover time in using large amount of data within defined timelines and increase effectiveness and efficiency.

Financial Services, Healthcare, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Retail, and Technology are key verticals where D&A has emerged as a vital tool for driving innovation, efficacy, and growth. D&A applications are segmented into two types — diagnostic/descriptive and prescriptive/predictive analytics. The predictive analytics segment is expected to grow at a higher rate primarily due to increasing demand for predictive analytics solutions, which deliver insights into customer behavior and predict future trends, such as the ones mentioned below.

Well-informed decision-making

D&A provides insightful, data-driven information that helps organizations in understanding their markets, operations, and consumers. They can identify patterns, trends, and correlations. Furthermore, they make well-informed decisions supported by data and metrics rather than mere guesswork. Businesses can enhance productivity, reduce costs, uncover new opportunities, and reduce risks by optimizing their strategies and making more informed decisions.

Enhanced efficiency and productivity

D&A enables organizations to boost efficiency and productivity by automating and streamlining processes, maximizing resource allocation, and reducing manual labor. Businesses can streamline their workflows by locating and eliminating bottlenecks and redundancy. Additionally, D&A helps businesses in finding areas where productivity can be improved such as waste reduction, better inventory control, and supply chain optimization.

Improved customer experience

D&A enables businesses to pinpoint areas where they may improve their customer experience, such as reducing wait times, boosting customer service, or optimising user interfaces, by providing them with relevant insights on the behavior, preferences, and needs of their customers. Thus, D&A enables companies to customize their offers to match each customers specific needs, strengthening relationships with them and increasing customer loyalty.

Enhanced risk management

Organizations can analyse data in real time to take proactive measures to reduce potential dangers.

They can reduce the likelihood of monetary losses, reputational damage, and other negative outcomes by using D&A to enhance risk management.

Competitive advantage

Organizations can expand their market share, boost revenue growth, and strengthen their brand by utilizing D&A to gain a competitive advantage. The demand for D&A continues to remain strong from traditionally leading markets of North America and EMEA, as well as from the emerging APAC market.

Company Overview

LatentView Analytics is a global frontrunner and fast-growing digital analytics company. We drive digital transformation for our clients by helping them combine digital and traditional data to gain a competitive advantage. We provide 360-degree view of the digital consumer, enabling companies to predict new revenue streams, anticipate product trends and popularity, improve customer retention rates, and optimize investment decisions.

We work with prominent Fortune 500 and equivalent enterprises to execute end-to-end analytics strategy, optimization, and implementation. Our expertise includes digital solution accelerators, big data capabilities, social media predictive analytics, and analytics tools.

By leveraging the power of technology and analytics and partnerships with industry leaders in the cloud, data visualization, data engineering, and customer data platforms space, we assist organizations in using data to excel in the digital world. This sets us apart from conventional pure-play analytics companies focusing only on analytics strategy or delivery.

Since its inception, LatentView Analytics has helped clients gain valuable business insights and drive business growth by creating holistic and sustainable impact powered by data. We continually strive to develop leading-edge solutions to leverage data. With an eye toward the future, we assist businesses in moving from data to insights. We have a diversified client base of 60 active clients worldwide that we served in FY23. Our client base is diversified across size, industry, and geography. We primarily provide services to companies in the Technology, CPG and Retail, Financial Services, and Industrials (Automotive, Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, and Logistics) sectors.

Company Verticals and Overview

Technology

The Technology industry is the forerunner in the era of digital transformations. It is witnessing innovation across industries including BFSI, Retail, Media and Entertainment, Agriculture, Utilities, and many more. The year 2023 and beyond will see a continuation of the shift in innovation with accelerated adoption and evolution of the cloud, 5G networks, quantum computing, AI, and ML — all combined into one platform. As the landscape is constantly changing, organizations are challenged to create a business model around their customers and simultaneously adapt to their changing needs. This entails developing interconnected user experiences that harness data and turn insights into action across businesses in real time. Some of the key trends to drive growth in 2023 are:

• Taking cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to the next level by ensuring that all the data is accessible in real time under one roof to facilitate better decision-making.

• Creating predictive models for data-driven decision-making for revenue intelligence and increased sales and productivity.

• Increasing data warehousing capabilities in order to gain access to new data and efficient use of historical data.

• Leading the initiatives to develop a sustainable business model to reduce environmental impact.

• Harnessing real-time data to efficiently predict consumer behavior, scale faster, and improve automation process.

According to Gartners March 2023 release, a survey was conducted to understand how economic turbulence poses challenges to general managers, how confident they are in their ability to achieve their plans, and the measures planned to tackle the uncertainty. The survey found that 72% of high-tech leaders in the US, Canada, and Western Europe have plans to increase revenue in 2023 despite the current economic uncertainty. Additionally, almost half of those leaders believe they will be able to outperform their competition this year. GAI has presaged a revolutionary shift in the world of technology. One of the GAIs, ChatGPT, released on November 22, 2022, attracted 100 million users in just two months after its launch and quickly became one of the most important topics of conversation in the technology industry. In both the short- and long terms, GAI can transform every aspect of human activity to boost productivity, reduce costs, and promote innovation, along with other far-reaching benefits. The market for GAI has shown phenomenal growth due to soaring demand and technological adoption. This is evidenced by the increase in startup investments in AI and many other businesses launching AI-based services. Experts believe that by 2030, the market for GAI would touch US$110.8 billion.

The Technology sector in North America is the third-largest contributor to the regional D&A spend.

Technology continues to remain a strong vertical for us, contributing to 68.9% of our revenue in FY23. At LatentView Analytics, we are uniquely positioned to assist our customers to accomplish synergies and success by delivering critical analytical insights through our deep skills in domain, data science, and data engineering. Our growth-led methodology helps customers to uncover insightful information.

Industrials

Despite supply chain disruptions and workforce shortages, the Industrials sector continued to build the momentum it gained emerging from the pandemic. While overall demand continues to remain strong, there are indications that some of the sectors might face temporary challenges due to concerns related to rising inflation, uncertain economic conditions, and cost optimization strategies, which seem to be implemented across industries. To sustain competition and growth, it has become mandatory for organizations to leverage digital technologies and other pillars of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, adopt strategies for the future of work, and drive supply chain resiliency. The key trends across Industrials in 2023 are:

• Investing in emerging/advanced technologies to help mitigate risk and remain agile.

• Implementing a broad range of talent management strategies to reduce voluntary exits and tackle ongoing supply chain disruption.

• Taking a holistic approach to smart factory initiatives to unlock new horizons to drive more efficient operations, and ultimately, improve business outcomes.

• Focusing on net zero, ESG, and sustainability.

The Industrials sector sits on mammoth amounts of data from varied sources, such as sensors, production equipment, logistics systems, and customers. Leveraging this data to understand customer behavior and identify production and supply chain bottlenecks can lead to a significant rise in productivity, increase cost savings, and enhance cash flow. Furthermore, with the steep rise in connected vehicles, automotive industries can fuel business growth by underpinning data analytics. Under Industrials vertical, LatentView Analytics offers the following services.

• Customer and marketing analytics:

Helps businesses understand their customers better by analyzing data from marketing campaigns, sales data, and social media. This information can be used to improve customer acquisition, retention, and engagement.

• Connected vehicle analytics: Helps businesses collect and analyze data from connected vehicles. This data can be used to improve safety, efficiency, and customer service.

• Supply chain and manufacturing analytics: Helps businesses optimize their supply chains and manufacturing processes. This can lead to reduced costs, improved efficiency, and better customer service.

• Enterprise functional analytics: Helps businesses improve their overall performance by analyzing data from across the enterprise. This data can be used to identify areas for improvement, make better decisions, and improve efficiency.

Industrials contributed 12.5% of our revenue in FY23. Becoming data driven in the Industrials sector requires instilling the necessary resources and pivoting existing processes and systems to collect and analyze data, which is LatentView Analytics forte. We have helped several Fortune 500 companies in the Industrials vertical to unlock the full value of their data and derive truly actionable insights from it. We have helped businesses improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and reduce costs.

CPG and Retail

The CPG and Retail industry is witnessing waves of transformation powered by changing consumer demographics, accelerated adoption of emerging technologies, and shifting consumer buying habits. These new dynamics are demanding organizations to rethink their business strategies, which is offering huge opportunity to companies like LatentView Analytics to redesign their marketing and operations using data analytics expertise. Post COVID-19 pandemic, CPG and Retail organizations have realized the advantage of investing in advanced technologies, which helped them to remain agile and capitalize on newer opportunities. Some of the important areas that will continue to remain a game changer in 2023 are cloud migration, blockchain, IoT, retail analytics, consumer analytics, integration of AI/ML to create seamless consumer experiences, omnichannel commerce, metaverse, and AR/VR. According to Global Market Insights release, the retail analytics market size surpassed US$10 billion in 2022 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 24% between 2023 and 2032. Rapid urbanization and rising e-commerce sector will drive the industry demand. Innovation, digitalization, and the development of next-generation analytics tools in developed economies will further accelerate the use of data analytics in retail. The rise of e-commerce and digital technologies has led to the generation of vast amounts of data every minute on consumer behavior, market trends, and sales performance. In todays fast-changing era, it is critical for organizations to stay connected and informed as it provides better visibility into real-time point-of-sale data, empowering them to forecast demand, identify customer behavior, and stay ahead of buying trends. Additionally, they can leverage these insights to improve shelf availability, execute just-in-time deliveries, build resilience, prevent costly markdowns, and make better decisions about production planning and supply chain operations.

Historically, CPG and Retail organizations have lagged behind the industry in data utilization. As per an industry report, data-powered decision-making in the sector stands at 44% despite great potential. With the current inflationary macroeconomic environment across industries, there is a need to build a data-powered culture that helps to make data-driven decisions for renewed impact and stay shielded from unforeseen challenges.

CPG and Retail contributed 10.2% of our revenue in FY23. As CPG and Retail organizations struggle to glean an end-to-end and structured line of sight from their data, LatentView Analytics, through our analytical and consulting expertise, helps businesses break data silos and gain a competitive advantage.

Financial Services

Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) continued to remain the fastest sector in its digital transformation journey in 2022. The digital banking trend also continued to gain momentum in the foreseeable future, leading to many banks closing entire segments of branch networks as their digital maturity grows. Additionally, the development of fintech startups and the integration of blockchain into payment systems have contributed to the expansion of the digital banking industry. Increased focus on customer experience, as well as a rise in open banking, data security, and increased usage of AI and automation for faster and more efficient process are some of the key trends for 2023 that will shape the future of BFSI industry.

According to Allied Market Research report 2022, the global data analytics in the banking market is estimated to increase from US$4.93 billion in 2021 to US$28.11 billion by 2031, expanding at a CAGR of 19.4% over the time period. With increased frauds, data breaches, and cyberattacks, data analytics in the banking market is increasingly being adopted to avoid these challenges, provide effective insights to the customers, and remain competitive.

Some of the key trends in data analytics and banking in 2023 are the rise in the use of AI and augmented analytics, Data Operations (DataOps), data governance, composable data analytics, cloud-based analytics, and the multi-cloud strategy. Data analytics is transforming the BFSI industry, enabling financial institutions to make more accurate and informed decisions, identify trends and patterns in large datasets, manage risks and online frauds more effectively, and gain a deeper understanding of their operations. In todays digital world, banks and financial institutions need to leverage the power of technology and data analytics to move from a growth-only strategy to a profitable business model. Financial Services contributed 8.5% of our revenue in FY23. LatentView Analytics, with proven expertise in financial analytics, provides strategic, technological, and operational solutions and business intelligence to help clients minimize operational, risk, and marketing costs and maximize revenue. LatentView Analytics has partnered with multiple Fortune 500 clients in the space of payment processing, payment networks, insurance, cryptocurrency, banking, and asset management.

Our unique, custom-built solutions in risk analytics, anti-financial crimes, fraud detection, cross-order travel payment analytics, and B2B product marketing strategic decision boards have directly addressed critical problems our clients face.

Revenue

On a consolidated basis, our company registered total operating revenue of

5,388 million for the year-ended March 31, 2023, compared with 4,078 million in the year-ended March 31, 2022, which is the highest ever in our history. Despite the uncertain macroeconomy, we managed to deliver revenue growth of 32.1% in FY23 demonstrating strong long term relationship with our customers. Specifically, the Financial Services vertical grew by 90% and Technology, our largest vertical, grew by 39% during FY23, validating the solid demand environment and our strong domain capabilities in these verticals. Existing clients contributed 71% of growth in revenue, with the remaining revenue coming from new clients.

Other income

Our other income for the year-ended March 31, 2023, is 558 million as against

210 million for the year-ended March 31, 2022. It primarily comprises of interest earned on deposits with banks, bonds, and mutual funds fair valuation gains, script income on our services considered as deemed exports. Our average investment base in the current year is higher on account of midyear IPO funds raised in the previous year and higher investible surplus generated in the current year. With raise in interest rates in the market, we were able to generate higher income across all the instruments in our portfolio.

We also benefited with favorable foreign exchange movement and receipt of service export incentive in the current year.

Employee benefits

On a consolidated basis, our payroll and related benefits incurred was 3,361 million for the year-ended March 31, 2023, compared with 2,442 million on March 31, 2022, an increase of 38.8%. It has increased from 59.4% in the previous year to 62.4% in the current year as a percentage of revenue. The raise is attributable to:

• Net increase in the headcount by 256 (Delivery [199], Marketing and Demand Generation [36], and Corporate Functions [21]).

• Remuneration increase was effective from April 2022 to all employees and from October 2022 for a range of employees. Our blended raise in India and the US was 16% and 6.4%, respectively.

• Grants of 3,63,000 and 18,93,617 were issued to eligible employees and KMP in the current and the previous year has led to increase in ESOP expense. The grants get vested over the next 4 years from the issue date.

*March 31, 2023 : #March 31, 2022

We onboarded our new Growth head and increased our net GTM count by 11 in the USA.

In our endeavor to increase our footprint in the European markets, we have augmented our front-end sales team by a mix of internal and lateral talent sourcing. We have got on board a new region head.

Selling and Admin Expense

Our selling and admin expense have remained in the same levels of 10.7% of revenue, while in absolute terms, it has grown by 31.8% driven by the following factors:

• We have participated in an increasing number of marketing events.

• 45% in the current year resultingOur onsite count increased by almost in higher visa and associated travel costs.

• Our travel cost is higher due to relaxation of pandemic-related norms, marketing events, and increased client meetings and interactions.

• We have onboarded 7 advisors by the end of the year.

Depreciation and Amortization

Our depreciation and Amortization expense has reduced from 2% in the previous year to 1.6 % as a percentage of revenue in the current year.

Profitability

During the year-ended March 31, 2023, our company earned a profit of 1,554 million (26.1%) compared with 1,295 million (30.2%) for the year-ended March 31, 2022. Our profits grew by 45% from the previous year excluding the one-time exceptional item of 226.19 million. The profits for the financial year ended 2022–23 witnessed growth on account of:

• Strong and healthy long-term relationship with our clients.

• Tax break on account of an exercise of options by employees in the US.

• Prudent investment portfolio diversification.

Balance Sheet

1. Cash and Investments

Our cash and investment position as of March 31, 2023, was at 10,786 million (Including unutilized IPO funds 2,539) compared with 9,325 million for March 31, 2022. The breakup of investments is as follows.

(In Million)	March 31, 2023	March 31, 2022
Investment in bonds	3,223	1,086
Investment in mutual funds	768	654
Investment in Fixed deposits	5,245	5,020
Investment in government securities	1,016	197
Cash in bank (including deposits with original maturity (3 months)	534	2,368
Total	10,786	9,325

In this year, we have prudently churned the portfolio and invested in securities yielding best-in-class yield while keeping our funds in the safest and highly secured AAA rated or equivalent instruments.

Our funds are well-diversified across all the geographies that we operate in and meet working capital requirements.

2. Trade receivables

Our trade receivables as on March 31, 2023, was at 985 million vis-?-vis 837 million as of March 31, 2022. Days sales outstanding (DSO) for the year-ended March 31, 2023, was at 67 compared with 75 as on March 31, 2022.

3. Total equity

Major events and corresponding movements pertaining to total equity are as follows.

(In Million)	Opening	Share Option Exercise	Profit for the Year	Items of OCI	Closing
Share capital	200	4	0	0	205
Securities premium	4,523	85	0	0	4,608
Retained earnings	5,369	0	1,554	-1	6,923
Other reserves	171	20	0	148	339
Total	10,264	109	1,554	147	12,074

Key Financial Ratios

In accordance with the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements 2018) (Amendment) Regulations, 2018, the company is required to provide details of significant changes (change of 25% or more) compared with the immediately previous financial year) in key sector-specific financial ratios. The company has identified the following ratios as key financial ratios.

	Consolidated
	FY 2022–23	FY 2021(22
Revenue growth (%)	32.1	33.3
Net profit margin (%)	26.1	30.2
Operating profit margin (%)	26.9	29.9
Debtors turnover (number of days)	67	75
EPS basic ()	7.71	7.09
Return on equity (%)	13.9	17.7

Operational Review

Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, the company has witnessed strong growth across geographies, demonstrating a resilient business model. In addition, the company continued to invest in people to strengthen its bandwidth, with a net addition of 256 people during the year.

Advisory Council

We constituted our Advisory Council at the end of FY2022, and by the end of this year, we will have 7 active advisors on board. Our additions inter alia include:

• Raj Menon. Raj has served as president of Sun Hydraulics and brings with him 30+ years of global experience in industrials and manufacturing. His operational and manufacturing expertise would help us expand our work in the Industrials sector.

• Egbert van Acht. Egbert is a global senior-level executive and former Philips CEO for Global Personal Health. With 30+ years of experience in leading businesses in consumer goods, health & wellness, and digital healthcare, he offers our clients insights into complex business problems and advises us on market and growth opportunities.

• John Copeland.John has 25+ years of experience in marketing strategy and analytics from consulting and leadership roles at leading firms like McKinsey and Company, Accenture, Prophet, eBay, and Adobe.

• TV Kumaresh. Kumaresh comes with a deep experience in leading strategies and execution for Fortune 100 Financial Services companies, real estate, building digital customer-centric experiences, and innovation in the automotive and auto insurance space, leading growth, transformation, and due diligence consulting projects for McKinseys clients.

Board of Directors

The LatentView Analytics Board currently has 6 members, comprising 4 independent directors and 2 wholetime directors. We do not have changes in the constitution of the board in this year.

Recognitions

LatentView Analytics received multiple awards and accolades during the year, including:

• Great Place to Work. The recognition is based on the responses given by our employees across various parameters that constitutes employee satisfaction. This certification further reinforces LatentView Analytics as an employer of choice.

• Certified as one of Indias Best Workplaces in IT & IT-BPM 2022.

It reinforces the standing as a "Great Place to Work" for the next generation of professionals. Our employees underpin the confidence and trust our customers place in us, and this recognition is a testament to our positive work culture.

• Silver Award for Excellence in Rewards and Recognition Strategy.

The awards are an initiative of the ETHR World, the flagship digital portal for the HR vertical of The Economic Times daily. This recognition is a testament to LatentViews unwavering commitment to fostering a positive and empowering work culture where the contribution of every individual is valued and rewarded.

• In our maiden response to CDP (Climate Disclosure Programme), we received an Awareness band rating of C, which was in line with the regional (Asia) and sector (specialized professional services) averages.

People Strength

As on March 31, 2023, the company had a total headcount of 1,116 compared with 860 employees at the end of March 31, 2022.

• Prashant Ramanujan joined LatentView Analytics as Chief Growth Officer. Prashant comes with a blend of hands-on delivery execution, pre-sales, and business scaling functions across digital, technology, and data products and services. He brings expertise in market research and crafting and executing GTM strategies, coupled with building a technical ecosystem of a team along with partners.

• Strengthening our footprint in Europe, we onboarded Sanjay Annadate and recruited 9 senior management personnel in the region during the year, a majority of which was done in Q4FY23. With this investment, the company aims to deepen its focus on European business opportunities and drive growth.

• Sumit Misra, a seasoned senior management professional with 25+ years of experience in formulating growth strategies across diverse vertical segments joined us as Head - Data Engineering.

Business Outlook

In todays highly competitive world and uncertain economic conditions, organizations are increasingly relying on data-driven insights to make more accurate and precise decisions to maximize efficiency and remain competitive. The management continues to remain focused on the companys core areas of business, viz., Technology, Industrial, CPG & Retail, and BFSI. We are creating capabilities that cut across industries, specifically in the areas of Supply Chain, Data Engineering, and Advanced Data Science. We believe these Centres of Excellence would fortify our positioning in the market and create differentiated service offerings. This approach should lead to greater focus on industry-specific pain points as well capitalize on faster pockets of growth available in these areas. LatentView Analytics reported the highest ever full-year revenue and profit margins in the history of company. Revenue witnessed growth of 32% on year-on-year basis to 5,388 million for FY23. The growth was broad-based across Technology, Financial Services, and CPG and Retail. We remain committed to invest in growth opportunities and expand our capabilities. We are confident that our strong execution track record, prudent capital allocation, sharp value propositions based on gaps identified in the market, and verticalized approach positions us well to sustain the growth momentum in FY2024 and beyond.

Risk Governance

The success of a company is dependent on how it manages the risk inherent in the business. The company operates in a segment, which is widely affected by various external and internal risks. To minimize the effect of such risks, the company has formalized a policy and the Board has constituted a Risk Management Committee for identifying, assessing, mitigating, monitoring, and reporting risk. The Risk Management Committee was constituted during the current year. The committees responsibility and authority include:

1. To formulate a detailed risk management policy, which includes:

• A framework for identification of internal and external risks specifically faced by the listed entity, including financial, operational, sectoral, sustainability (particularly ESG related risks), information, cyber security risks, or any other risk as may be determined by the Committee.

• Measures for risk mitigation, including systems and processes for internal control of identified risks.

• A business continuity plan.

2. To ensure that appropriate methodology, processes, and systems are in place to monitor and evaluate risks associated with the business of the company.

3. To monitor and oversee the implementation of the risk management policy, including evaluating the adequacy of risk management systems.

4. To periodically review the risk management policy, at least once in two years, including considering the changing industry dynamics and evolving complexity.

5. To keep the Board of Directors informed about the nature and content of its discussions, recommendations, and actions to be taken.

6. The Risk Management Committee shall evaluate risks related to cyber security and ensure appropriate procedures are placed to mitigate these risks in a timely manner.

7. The Risk Management Committee may delegate matters to a panel comprising a minimum of two members of the Committee plus such additional individuals with relevant expertise as deemed appropriate, and subject to terms of reference (including protocols for escalation to the Committee) as determined by the Committee.

8. The Risk Management Committee shall make regular reports to the Board, including with respect to risk management and minimization procedures along with its recommendations to the Board.

9. The Risk Management Committee shall review and reassess the adequacy of its charter periodically and recommend any proposed changes to the Board for approval.

10. The Risk Management Committee shall have access to any internal information necessary to fulfil its oversight role.

11. The Risk Management Committee shall review and reassess the adequacy of its charter periodically and recommend any proposed changes to the Board for approval.

12. The Risk Management Committee shall review and reassess the adequacy of its charter periodically and recommend any proposed changes to the Board for approval.