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Chennai-based LatentView Analytics Ltd has set its eyes on a company in the data engineering space as its next possible target for acquisition. Company officials are looking at a prospect in this space in Pune. In March, the digital analytics consulting and solutions firm acquired 70 per cent of Decision Point’s outstanding equity capital for $39.1 million. Company officials declined to comment on the funds allocation for the acquisition.
Data engineering involves building and maintaining the infrastructure that allows data to be collected, processed, and analysed.
Commenting on a question on how the company sees inorganic opportunities going forward, Rajan Sethuraman, CEO, LatentView, said it would be a parallel process. “We do not intend to take our eyes off the opportunity funnel from an inorganic standpoint,” he told analysts while discussing the company’s fourth quarter financial results.
“In fact, next week I and the leadership team are going to be in Pune meeting with another prospect in the Data Engineering space. Data Engineering plus they have built a platform. There are a few areas of focus for us. One, as you pointed out, is Data Engineering with focus on strong capabilities, even in one of the hyperscalers. That could be a really interesting opportunity for us,” he said.
Sethuraman said the company is also looking at BFSI and Retail as two other industry verticals where there could be opportunities. And if it’s a combination of those two dimensions, meaning Data Engineering work for Financial Services companies, then that would be even better because it takes on both the dimensions, he said.
Hiring trend
On the opportunities for acquisitions, he said timing today is interesting because many of the smaller companies in the last 12 or 18 months, because of the macroeconomic sluggishness, have faced challenges and then there is a more realistic kind of an expectation from a valuation standpoint. The window of opportunity will be available. “I don’t think there is any plan to slow down or not look at opportunities,” he said.
On hiring, Sethuraman said at this point in time, there is only a small batch of 30 people out of the 450 offers that the company made on campus. The company had already onboarded close to 360 people. There were some dropouts because this year has been a bit protracted in terms of the onboarding, but of course, many of them also held on to the offer because of the general scenario in the market.
Of the people onboarded, the company has already deployed about nearly 40 per cent of the people, and the rest of the people are in ‘either boot camps or they are shadow mode.’ For next year, the company has made only about 250 offers on the campuses, he said.
On the BSE, the company’s share price closed at ₹482.25, up by 3.16 per cent.
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