Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to LatentView Analytics Limited Q2 FY 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Asha Gupta from EY. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am. Thank you, Sagar. Good morning to all participants in this call. Welcome to the Q2 FY 2024 earnings call of LatentView Analytics Limited. The results and presentation have already been mailed to you, and you can also view them on the website www.latentview.com. In case anyone do not have the copy of press release or presentation, or you're 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, who we'll be referring to as Rajan, and we have CFO of the company, Rajan Venkatesan, whom we will be referring as Raj, to avoid the confusions and while reading the transcript. We'll be starting the call with a brief update of the quarter, 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 statement, must be viewed in conjunction with the risk and uncertainty that we face. These risks and uncertainties are included, but not limited to, what we have mentioned in the prospectus filed with the SEBI and subsequent annual report that you can find it on our site. Having said that, I will now hand over the floor to Rajan. Over to you, Rajan. Thanks, Asha. Good morning, all, for taking the time and joining this call of Latent View Analytics. I'm sure that you all had a chance to look at the press release and go through the presentation as well. I don't want to repeat what is already stated there. From our perspective, we see that quarter two has continued to remain, in some sense, a little muted in comparison to what the scenario was a year back in quarter two of FY 2023. As you all know, the macroeconomic scenario continues to remain a little sluggish. However, we are happy that we have been able to report a growth in quarter two as well, from an incremental quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year perspective. Much of the growth, I would say, has come from additional work that we have got from our existing clients and stakeholders that we are working with. Which is good news for us in the sense that most of them feel that the work that is currently underway is of significant importance to them, even in the current economic conditions in which they are operating. Therefore, we continue to execute on the initiatives that have been already identified. In many instances, there has been additional work that had to be done even as part of those initiatives, which is what has contributed to the growth. As stated in the quarter one earnings call, new initiatives continue to remain a little challenging for many of our clients. So while there is widespread acceptance that a lot needs to be done on the data analytics front, many of them are still finding challenges in terms of securing budget or even in case they have budgets to get all the necessary approvals from within their organizations for starting off substantial new initiatives. We have witnessed some additions in the form of new initiatives, but many of them are, I would say, smaller in scope and size at this point in time, and the substantial larger initiatives are taking a lot more time and conversations for us to convert. In spite of this, we did have additions to our account list this quarter, and we were able to start working with a few new accounts, as we indicated in the press release. We also saw that one of our accounts crossed the $15 million per annum revenue threshold, which is really a good piece of news for us. It reaffirms the fact that many organizations are still getting started on their analytics journey, and there is a lot more to be done in terms of what can be achieved through the power of data analytics. We also continue to proceed with some of the important initiatives that we have from a growth perspective. I will just talk about a few of them here. We added two more people to our advisory council. Both of them come with substantial background and experience in the retail and CPG space, and bring with them a wealth of knowledge in addition to the connections that they have within the industry. I have been mentioning in the past that a lot of our go-to-market strategy is now dedicated on specific value propositions that we have built in response to the challenges and the opportunities that our clients see within their context. And this has been a story over the last nine to 12 months. So more and more of our initial conversations, as well as actual initiatives, now revolve around specific value propositions that we are taking to market to address these problems and opportunities. In particular, we have found a lot of traction for our migration value proposition in the data engineering space. We've been seeing good traction for our on-shelf availability and demand forecasting in the population analytics space. We've been seeing good traction for our one customer view, which is a 360-degree view of the customer in the hospitality, in the CPG space, for example. We also participated in several events. A lot of them were internal events that we had organized. Our 15th LatentView Analytics Roundtable event was held in New York in the month of August, and it saw a lot of interest and traction in terms of the topics that got discussed around how do you prioritize on analytics initiatives in the current set of challenges. We also were able to attend a few external events, including the Data Hack Summit that happened in the U.S. This is all helping generate a lot of new conversations and opportunities. As I said earlier, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to translate them into sign-ups in terms of engagements and statements of work. We continue to expand our sales team as well. We brought in two senior people into our front-end team in the U.S., specifically on the CPG space. Both of them, again, come in with a lot of experience, as well as the relationships that they have with senior stakeholders within the industry. In some sense, they are hitting the ground running and generating new leads and opportunities for us already. One other thing that I want to touch upon is what is happening on the generative AI and the large language model space. I'm sure that you are all hearing about all the action and the buzz in the space. We have been focused on a two-pronged approach when it comes to generative AI. There are two specific value propositions that we have built, which are using the Generative AI technologies as the central thing for technological trust. One of them is LASER, which is focused on how do you extract meaningful insights from unstructured text data and documentation that a lot of our clients grapple with. Whether it is related to procurement or whether it's related to customer reviews, or whether it's related to contract documents that they have. It's a ton of information that is typically buried within these, but you can actually mine them successfully using the power of Generative AI technology. So LASER focuses on that. The other one is titled GenCompose. That is focused on how do you use the creative power and aspects that a Generative AI brings in to generate content that is very personalized and targeted for the specific customer segments that our clients are looking at and they are interested in. GenCompose helps create the kind of engaging content, whether it is text, whether visual image, analytics image, with the intent that you have a very specific tailored content that appeals to the customer segments, to target customer segments, so that you can actually reach them better using messages that resonate with them. So these are two value propositions that are specifically using Generative AI at their core, and the main value proposition is the power of using Generative AI and Large Language Models to address specific issues. GenCompose, in particular, we are actually taking it to a lot of our B2B clients and prospects with the intent that they can actually mine the long tail of the leads and prospects that they have, and still reach them in a very engaged and personalized fashion, using the power of AI and the content that we can generate which targets them. The other prong of our Generative AI approach is really around embedding the power of Generative AI into all the other value propositions and solutions that we are building. As I mentioned, for example, in the supply chain space, work that we are doing around procurement, for example, procurement contracts and other things, you can actually look at insights that are coming out of that, and you can layer in generative AI type of approaches to mine that information and integrate that with the general On-Shelf Availability and ConnectedView value proposition that we have in the supply chain space. So this is the other approach that we are taking in terms of integrating generative AI components into the other value propositions that we have. I would say that at this point in time, both of that is seeing some good traction. We will see more action in the coming months and quarters, and we will continue to update on the same. This quarter was also very good for us in terms of external recognition that we got. We were awarded the Minsky Award in the India market. The Analytics India Magazine organized this Cypher event, and as part of that, they have the Minsky Award. We received it for the work that we are doing along with the International Myeloma Foundation, specifically focused on how to use data analytics for immunogenomics. We are also recognized by the Great Place to Work Institute, and we now feature in the list of top companies to work for women. And finally, we also featured in the maturity quadrant, analytics maturity quadrant that the Analytics India Magazine publishes. So, these are some things that kind of give further motivation and further push type of work that we're doing in the data analytics space. Overall, I would say that, from a demand standpoint, Q1, Q2 have continued to remain a little muted. At this point in time, I would say that, from a Q3 standpoint, we will continue to grow, slightly better than the growth rates that we have seen in quarter one and quarter two. How the entire year turns out and how the next year will unfold, we will be in a better position to provide an update as quarter three unfolds. Quarter three is typically the timeframe during which a lot of our existing contracts are renewed. Hopefully, we will also see kickoff of some new initiatives on the back of conversations that we have been having this year. We should be able to provide a better update on how the full year will look and how the next year is gonna pan out when we do the update at the end of quarter three. With that, I'll hand it over to Raj, our CFO, to provide some additional highlights from a financial standpoint. Thank you, Rajan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 FY 2024 earnings call. Just to add to what Rajan already covered as part of his opening conversation. For the quarter ended September thirtieth, we are glad to report that we were able to grow our top line by 5.4% on a sequential basis. This is in INR terms, of course, and 17.6% on a year-on-year basis. In dollar terms, again, for this quarter, we were able to grow by about 4.9% on a sequential basis. As elaborated by Rajan, the growth was largely driven by growth in existing accounts. Even over there, growth in some of our sort of marquee and large logos, where we were able to sign on incremental work or incremental initiatives from these clients. We are, of course, continuing to witness some level of caution in new deal closures and signing new logos. That continues because of the uncertain macroeconomic environment at this point in time. However, like Rajan mentioned, Q3 at this point in time looks like we will be able to report slightly better numbers in growth terms over Q2. As for the full year, we'll be able to give a much clearer picture as we, you know, close in on towards the end of this calendar year. Our income for this quarter included about INR 17 crore, a decrease of 5% on a sequential basis. Predominantly on the back of lower foreign exchange that we recognized during the current quarter. The EBITDA for the current quarter came in at about INR 13.8 crore, and EBITDA margin itself was at about 19.8%, which was, on a sequential basis, 80 basis points higher than what we reported in the earlier quarter. You would also remember that in the last quarter's earnings call, we did talk about the investments that we are continuing to make, notwithstanding the sluggish macroeconomic environment. I would say even in the current quarter, we did not sort of take our pedal off the foot in terms of investments that we are making in our sales and business development teams, as well as in running marketing events, right? So that we continue to ramp up the investments over there. However, we were able to drive some level of operational efficiency across our delivery organization. The utilization for the current quarter was marginally better than what we had in Q1. And that reflected in some level of EBITDA margin expansion. That coupled with slightly lower visa expenses. Visa expenses again tend to be cyclical in nature. So Q1 is when we have a higher share of the visa expenses. We had lower visa expenses in Q2. So the operational efficiencies combined with lower visa expenses and slightly lower, I would say, operational charges on the administrative side, led to margin expansion in the current quarter. That plus, of course, the benefit that came from the slightly higher revenue numbers for this quarter. Overall, I think we would expect the EBITDA margin trend to continue at these levels for the next two quarters as well, because we will not take our foot off the pedal in terms of the investments on the sales and marketing side. However, we will be able to take a much more calibrated view on where the margins are likely to be on a full year basis towards the end of Q3. As mentioned again, right, our guide, our guide for the current quarter is about INR 34.7 crore, representing a growth of 5.7% quarter-on-quarter. For H1, our revenue should be at INR 33.4 crore, expecting a growth of about 20.2%, with an EBITDA margin of 19.4%. In terms of geographical split of revenues, the U.S. continues to be the dominant geography, contributing 90% of our overall revenues. However, you would have also noted that in our press release, we did indicate that we are beginning to see some level of good traction in the European region. While we'll be able to give you a concrete view in terms of deal closures that we had in Europe in the next quarter's earnings call, we are happy to report that we are seeing good traction in at least the pipeline build-up. And also, some of the conversations moving to a very advanced stage of closure. We will be able to give you a better sense of what Europe is trending in the next quarter's earnings call. For the full year, I think, Europe will be between 5%-8% by the end of FY 2024. We could be at five in three, but we will, hopefully, you know, on the back of all the investments that we've been making, the following years, we should be able to see significant growth rate for that region. Technology continues to be the strongest vertical for us, contributing 71% of our overall revenues, followed by industrials. We have, I would say for the current quarter, if you look at CPG and retail, there has been a little bit of a shrinkage compared to the earlier quarter. This is not on the back of any client losses or ramp down in any budgets. As opposed to that, what had happened was in Q1, there were a few, I would, I would say, one-time projects, or, or discovery through consulting engagement that we had done for some of our CPG clients, where the follow-on work for that did not happen in, in, in Q1. That is the reason why you see a, you see a small, shrinkage, in this vertical in the current quarter. In terms of our balance sheet, our cash and cash equivalents, including the IPO monies, stood at about, thousand one hundred crores, as of September. In terms of our headcounts, our headcounts for the quarter ended at 1,146 people. As mentioned, we continue to invest, in people. In fact, in the current quarter, we onboarded close to about 80+ people from campuses. We will continue to add more people from campus in a staggered manner in Q3 as well. Lastly, the update on M&A, as I'm sure that all of you guys are sitting on. We are at this point in time in advanced stages of discussion with a few opportunities. Of course, we are going through the due diligence process and also, you know, preparing ourselves for, I would say, a more intense due diligence at this point in time. Hopefully, we should have some news on this front in the next earnings call for all of you folks. With that, I would like to end my talk, and I would hand it back to Asha for Q&A. Thank you so 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 phone. 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 Mohit Jain from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead. First, first is on pricing trends. Like, what kind of do you or specifically, do you see an uptick in pricing given that growth is back for us, at least for the last two quarters? That was one, and the related thing is, what is the headcount requirement you're looking at, say, next two quarters? Raj, do you want to take the pricing question? I can comment on the headcounts. I will. Hi, Mohit. Thanks for that question. In terms of pricing, I would say, at this point in time, like, we are getting into that season where we will be renewing a lot of the work that we execute. As most of the clients or almost percent of the clients that we work with follow the calendar year model budgeting cycle, we will be at this point in time initiating pricing conversations as well. We are hoping and are quite hopeful that at least in a few of our key accounts, we will be able to get pricing increases, given the last, I would say, couple of years, we've not had a raise pricing. But then again, it is again a function of how the macroeconomic environment looks. There is no, I would say, pressure on pricing at this point in time, that clients have come back and requested for either pricing cuts or you know, initiated any downward revision in pricing. That is not something. That's not a trend that we are seeing, but we will be putting the price hike in the upcoming quarter. Okay, thank you. I'll take the question on the headcounts. So Mohit, a lot of the hiring is, we continue to be on the campus front. So last year, we had made close to 400 offers on campus. And after taking into account acceptances and some of the natural attrition between offer date and date of joining, we are expecting that a total of 300 plus people will join us. At this point in time, we have completed onboarding about 1/3 of them. It's likely to get to about a 40%-45% mark by the middle of November, which means that we will have another 50% of that 300 number to onboard between mid-November and likely January, February time, depending on how the demand scenario unfolds for us, right, in Q3 and Q4. In addition to that, the current campus hiring season that is underway. This is for people who are passing out in May, June, July of 2024. We are going ahead with the hiring season, and we will be making about 200-250 offers. So broadly, that's the indication in terms of the numbers. Attrition has come down substantially in comparison to the previous quarters. Of course, as the demand scenario picks up, one could also expect that there'll be more opportunities available for people. So we'll have to see how that plays out. But at this point in time, we are confident of having the people required trained and ready for the opportunities that are currently in the pipeline. We will supplement this with some quantum of laterally hiring, depending on specific skill sets and any urgency, right, for initiatives that get underway. Right. And, sir, one follow-up on this. So I think if I get it right, you guys are now waiting for softer kind of margins over in the second half. But if our pricing environment is steady, and as you said in the opening remark of press release, that most of the investments are behind, shouldn't we expect some uptick in margins as we move forward? Mohit, the answer to that is yes. I mean, if the current growth trajectory continues, right? I mean, we are hopeful that at least Q3 will continue with the growth, it will be implemented. We could see marginal expansion in the EBITDA margins. However, what remains to be seen is how will the. On a full year basis, right? The renewals, how may we pan out, and what is the book of work that we have for the beginning of the next calendar year, right? I think that will be very critical for us from a full year standpoint. At this point in time, we do believe that if we continue at the same growth trajectory, right, which is, you know, 4%-5% or slightly higher than that, we should see benefit of this on the EBITDA margins on a full year basis. But it may not be back to the historical levels of 25%+. I think that will take some time for us, because even at this point in time, some of the investments that we made on the AE site, right, are for a much higher level of change, right, which is, you know, the visibility of which is at this point in time a little low. Oh, got it, sir. The gross margin is holding up, right? Yeah, the gross margin. On the gross margin front, both from a pricing standpoint as well as from a, I think, delivery efficiency standpoint, you know, we are, we are continuing to do well. So the gross margins are definitely holding up. But one thing, Mohit, even from a gross margin standpoint, what we have, I would say, noted in the last couple of quarters is, there's a marginal shift from in the, in the, in the, in the work that we deliver. There is a slight uptick, or increase in the on-site work that we have been executing, especially for some of our current clients, where there's a request for, for, for resources to be based on-site. And that, I would say, is having a marginal impact on gross margin, which is of course being offset by the better efficiency that we've been able to bring in through some better utilization. So utilization for the current quarter is almost at about 85%, in comparison to 81% of the previous quarter. So the increase in on-site was compensated by better utilization. I'll just add, Mohit, that, the reason for the on-site, uptick is because of the nature of the initiatives. When you have larger, substantial initiatives, there is opportunity for more leverage. But when you're doing smaller initiatives, typically, the intent is, let's get all the people close by, right, and then get it, monitored closely. So as bigger initiatives unfold, the leverage should get back. Understood. Perfect, sir, and good quarter. Thank you. Bye, Mohit. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Hitesh Malla from Steinberg India Advisors. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Am I audible all right? Yeah, we can hear you, Hitesh. Yeah. Hi, Raj. Hi, Rajan. Nice to hear from you guys again, and have a good quarter. A couple of questions from my side. The first one is on the technology vertical, right? Like, you guys have shown a really good quarter in terms of how that book has grown. I'm just curious in terms of how the nature of work of those clients has changed, because your peers in the industry seem to have very divergent sort of guidance and performance versus the nature of work. You know, it's kind of like marketing analytics. We're seeing, like, a lot of pressure in those verticals versus if it is more like health tech or something on those lines, they seem to be getting a lot of traction on those contracts. I just wanted to get some sense of kind of what is driving this technology vertical and any changes on that side. Yeah, sure. Thanks for the questions. I wouldn't say that there has been any substantial departure in terms of the nature of the work. A lot of the work still continues to be at the front end of the value chain, customer and marketing analytics. I think one of the things that we see is, given the spectrum of clients that we work with, most of these organizations have some pockets of their business, which is growing really well, and seem to have good demand. So, we have also pivoted over the last quarters to opening more doors within these accounts, which are focused on the businesses that are performing well. So you take technology companies across the board. I mean, it's been like, in some sense, it's not uniform performance, right, across their businesses. There are pockets that are doing well. There are some pockets where they are also looking at some depths, given just that the interest rates have gone up and companies are reluctant, right, to kick off substantially, you know, big projects. So that is having an impact on which parts of the business are growing. So we have been looking at helping businesses where there is an uptick from a customer marketing analytics perspective. Another area that is finding some traction is on the devices side. We have seen that some of the supply chain challenges that were there two years back during the pandemic, and they are starting to subside. There is also a need for greater visibility across this, across the device supply chain. We are starting to see some traction for our ConnectedView value proposition on that front. That is also driving some of the interest and the action. Otherwise, I would say that a lot of the new initiatives that we have gotten into are related to work that we have performed for them earlier. On the back of the impact that those initiatives are delivering, we have seen additions to those teams where they say: Okay, we have solved these problems. Let's actually go a little deeper, right? Then tackle some more nuanced understanding of customer behavior, whether it is on the B2B or on the B2C side. B2B, in particular, is seeing some good interesting action. I talked about one of the value propositions, right, around the B2B growth engine. How do you address the long tail of account, and how do you mine them? So that is receiving some good traction, and we are having conversations on that front as well. Understood. And on a related note, Europe, you guys still seem to be very confident on achieving those 5%-8% of revenues by the end of the year, while it is still at 1.5% less than 1.5% today. But you have been making very significant additions in terms of the sales force and have had a couple of big hires in that region. So can we expect, like, a big deal closure, or do you have some visibility on, like, some of these big logos converting in Europe that gives you that confidence? Yeah, I think what is encouraging for us is the nature of the conversations and the accounts that we are engaging with. Much of our Europe go-to-market strategy is predicated on our advisor network and the connects that we are able to, you know, get through them. Europe is a tough market otherwise, you know, very, very relationship-driven. The good news is that the advisors that they are engaging with are able to get us introduced at very senior levels, and also with some of the top brands within Europe. I mean, all of these are Fortune 500 type of companies, and conversations are starting at the CXO and senior vice president level. Having said that, given just—given the general economic environment, there is obviously a reluctance to kick off any substantially large initiatives. Even the initiatives for which they already have budgets and they want to go forward, while the introduction is helping us get into the door, they still want to do some pilots to begin with, before they essentially expand their relationship with us. That's where we are at this time. As Raj mentioned, while we didn't have closures in quarter two itself, we have already seen some closures in October on the back of these conversations. There are at least a dozen very interesting conversations that are happening at this point in time. We will have more closures through the remainder of this quarter. However, I expect that these closures will probably be in the 250,000 range, in terms of the size of the initiatives that get underway. For us to start seeing $1 million, $2 million plus relationships, it will probably take a little bit more time. Now, of course, one hopes that economic climate also changes to aid us on this front. What will also be critical is that the initial initiatives that we are picking up that they are executed really well for us to get the confidence of the stakeholders that we are engaging with. What I can say now with a good deal of confidence is that right logos, right senior stakeholders and the right type of work as well. That is what is giving us the promise, right, is there on the back of all of it. Got it. Appreciate that. And one last thing before I get back into the queue. We've previously put a lot of attention on the data engineering work that we've been doing, and that stack or, like, that layer in the stack doing really well in this context. But just, like, curious on, in terms of, like, what portion of your revenues today is still data engineering, and how are you seeing that demand going forward? Yeah, that is intact. That trend is intact. Today, I would say it's probably in the 20%-23% mark. As I said in earlier calls, I expect that to actually go past the 25, maybe even past the 30% mark. Complex initiatives will require complex data engineering work to be done as well. When we look at organizations across the board, there is still a lot of data silos. There are a lot of challenges in terms of bringing it all together. It's a good thing that even right are building capabilities that will help organizations, right? It's one thing to move to the cloud, but if you just do a lift and shift, you will just inherit a lot of the silos and other challenges you might have leaked in your on-prem and legacy systems. Good news is that Microsoft, for example, right, with their, with their, Fabric, they are really pushing the, the envelope in terms of how you can bring it all together, right, into one platform in a more easy, seamless fashion. And companies like Snowflake, Databricks, they are also leading on that front. Google Cloud, again, a lot of investments happening on that area. So all of that will mean that there'll be quite a bit of work that will be needed done on the data engineering front, and therefore, the 20%-30% part of revenues coming from there, I would say, that trend is still intact. Got it. Thanks a lot, Raj. I'll get back into the queue now. Thanks so much. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all the participants in the conference call, please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have follow-up questions, please rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Vimal Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So my question is regarding margins. Now, over the last few quarters, we have seen almost a 10 percentage point decline in our operating margins. Now, if I were to look at our revenue growth performance, apart from one probably Q4, I think, of FY 2023, where we had a decline sequentially. Our sequential quarter-on-quarter performance has been quite decent. And if I were to believe that H2 is going to be better than H1 in terms of sequential growth, we should land up anywhere between 15%-17% growth for the year. And to see the 17% growth per se is not is really not not that bad given the scenario. But what worries me is despite that growth, we are looking at a flat trend for margin. I understand that we've made such investments, but could we have done better in terms of, you know, guarding our margins for this year? And what gives us the confidence that. And what is the kind of growth rates do we need to get back to that 29% kind of EBITDA margins? Thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks for the question. Let me take the business growth part of it, Raj, and then I'll hand it to you. Yeah, so the investments that were made, Vimal, were with an expectation of a 30% kind of a growth trajectory, right? And this is what we committed to, you know, a year back, for example. Actually, even in February of 2022, when we had gotten together, internally, like, to discuss what is the trajectory we were looking for the next three years, we wanted to be in that kind of trajectory. Of course, at that time, we weren't witnessing the kind of challenges, right, that we see currently in the environment. So we committed to a certain strategy and an approach at that time, and we have continued to stay the path, right? So a 30%-35% kind of growth trajectory is what will get us back into the 25%-28% EBITDA range. But obviously, the growth has been sluggish in comparison to that. Now, one might ask the question, in that case, why don't you scale back on the investments and improve on the EBITDA? Our experience, at least from a recent past, even during the pandemic times, is that these investments are important to make right now. And if we cut back on that, then emerging from the current economic climate might then prove a little bit of a catch-up game, right? So we are okay at this point in time to continue with the general investment philosophy that we have. We're starting to see some traction. It's also helping us maintain the incremental growth that you commented on, right? Which is, while it is not great, it is, it's not bad either, I mean, given the overall economic environment. So we're gonna continue to persist with this, and we will make some calibrated adjustments to this. We are okay with waiting a little bit longer, okay, for the EBITDA profile to return to our 25% kind of a range. I'll pass it to Raj, right, to add in any other nuances. So Rajan, you pretty much covered it. I mean, I also wanted to emphasize on the fact that the current level of sales and marketing investment that we have sort of made, which is completely reflected in the current PNL, is for us to deliver almost a 20%-30% growth. That would higher end of the 30% growth on a full year basis. And this is the basis for us to invest heavily in both the content as well as the other things that I think we didn't touch upon was the capability teams that we are investing in. These are, of course, teams that are building out value proposition that we go to market with much more sharper solutions that address specific client needs, right? Of course, up until now, majority of the people who are in the solution scope product development teams have been unbilled, so to say. One of the initiatives that we have as part of the, you know, driving operation efficiency concern is, you know, one of the things that we've taken up is we've also looking to see if some of the people in these capability teams can also be billed on engagement. That's something that we are actively reviewing, right? Which could also result in some level of margin unlocks in the coming quarters. But that aside, the intent right now is to continue, or not sort of take our foot off the pedal on, on the investments, even though, growth is not coming through rate or not in, in line with the current level of investments. We are fairly hopeful that once the demand comes back, which should happen in, in maybe one or two quarters. Of course, the hope was that in H2 of the current year, we will see demand coming back, but it looks like there is the, you know, the, the overall sentiment still continues to be a little weak, right? Our, our hope is that in a couple of quarters, we will start seeing demand, come back in, and therefore start seeing the margins, improve. We are not very unusually concerned about the margins being at the current levels. It's something that we can very easily tackle. What we want to set ourselves up for is the right level of growth. We believe that 20, at least a 30-35 growth is what we should achieve or deliver as a business on an organic basis, and the inorganic will be on top of that, right? We are trying to set ourselves up for that side of growth and we will continue to do so in the coming quarters as well. Understood, sir. Thank you so much for the answer. All the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chirag Kachhadiya from Ashika Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Hi, I have a couple of questions. I just want to know what size of acquisitions are you looking for forward, in terms of turnover and valuation-wise. And second, with the help of these acquisitions, which are in the pipeline or in advanced stage of discussion, as you mentioned, what synergy are we looking forward in terms of growth, margin, and from three to five years perspective? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Let me take this, Raj, and you can add in. Yeah, so from a size perspective, an ideal acquisition target will be anywhere in the $10 million-$20 million revenue range. And if the margin profile is similar to us, one could expect that it'll be a multiple of, I don't know, four, four and a half, anywhere between three and a half to five and aa half, okay, in terms of the revenue multiple. So that will give you a size of the acquisition itself in terms of valuation. We are currently focused on specific domains and capabilities. So for example, BFSI and consumer packaged goods, for example, these are areas that we are not very strong. We are behind the curve in terms of our representation within the space, so we are interested in those domains. From a capability standpoint, any new value proposition, it is a very value proposition-based play in these spaces. So for example, BFSI can be around risk and fraud, for example, right? In the consumer packaged goods, it could be around pricing, analytics, or revenue, for example, right? If there are particular solutions and value propositions that these companies bring to the table, then they will be more interesting for us to look at. Similarly, we'll be looking at capabilities around supply chain analytics, around data engineering, right? These are areas of focus as we have defined the growth strategy. So combination of these would make it an attractive target. Of course, if there are leverage opportunities in terms of if they have a dominant on-site model, and then we can unlock more value by offshoring some of the work, or if there's a consultative layer and doing that work, and there's a lot of follow-on work that we can further get in, or if it helps expand our reach out in terms of an adjacency, you know, like planning, budgeting, for example. These are all things that would be of interest. The intent is that the synergies will not only come in terms of their value propositions and our value propositions, which we can cross-sell into one another. But also that we are able to actually bring completely a new type of upscale on the back of solutions and value propositions, right? To what might have been typically done through a services model. So that will help unlock even more synergy, synergies and non-linearity. That's really what we are looking at. Raj, go ahead and add in, there's something else. No, Rajan, you, you pretty much covered all of it. I think, I think from a, from a synergy standpoint, we will be looking to one, some of the capabilities or solutions that we are creating. I mean, I think, you know, our, our endeavor would be if they're able to cross-sell and upsell some of the solutions that we are selling into the client set of, of the target. The other big sort of synergy unlock that we will definitely look at is using our go-to-market team, right? Because we have invested substantially in sales and business development teams in the U.S. as well as in the European region. This synergy unlock would happen if we are able to effectively leverage our go-to-market teams in these regions and accelerate the rate of growth of the target business. I think these would be the two big synergy unlocks that we would look at when we are looking at an acquisition. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Hitesh Malla from Steinberg India Advisors. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, thanks for the follow-up. Rajan, this is more for you. On the M&A front, couple of quarters ago, we did mention that we had couple of opportunities which were on the verge of finalizing. So just curious in terms of why those deals didn't go through. Was it more of a valuation concern? And then again, you know, the industry valuations have cooled off quite a bit in the last 12 months. So just curious as to like, what the- why those deals didn't go through and, you know, going forward, how can we expect some of these deals to come across, and what are the key characteristics that you are looking at around these acquisitions? Yeah, sure. There are a couple of deals where we felt quite positive about. One of them didn't materialize on account of two reasons. One is that there was a difference in the valuation expectations between us and I believe the current promoters. Also, a second reason was that the promoters were also debating between growth capital versus a complete sellout or a majority stake sale. And given the valuation differences, they took a call that they will instead take growth capital and then move forward, right, and get their business to a better level before they potentially explore this again. The other one, interestingly, that company did go ahead and complete the transaction. I mean, they got acquired by another organization. We were led to believe that they had actually shelved the plans and they were going to go back to the market around the December timeframe. But they were running a process in the background, and it looked like that process fructified. This is something that we were not completely clued in, because with us, the engagement was very strong, indicating that they had temporarily shelved the process and they are now talking to actual suitors and that they found us as somebody who they really liked in terms of the synergy and the culture fit and all that. But, then they decided to move forward with the, with the process that, they had already initiated sometime back, which they had kept in abeyance. So those two didn't pan out, right, for these reasons. Currently, the deals that are on the table, I mean, obviously, any such, instance also provides additional knowledge and learning for us and experience for us. So we are taking all of this into account. There is one opportunity which is quite advanced at this time. I think there are another half a dozen plus, which are in various stages of evaluation. Obviously, we will be factoring in all of this understanding. We don't want to go crazy, though, right, with, with the valuation. I mean, if demand comes back and there is a general economic sentiment improvement, that will also get factored into the valuation expectations that organizations have. So we want to make sure that that is in line with what we believe makes sense for us, what synergy benefits are possible and how we can unlock value. All of that will be taken into account in terms of how we value the business and what we are prepared to pay for it. I'll say that the one where we are a bit more advanced, we have actually ticked many of those boxes, and we seem to be moving in the right direction. Got it. A quick follow-up on the employee side. This quarter, we've seen, in fact, like the past couple of quarters, we've seen quite an aggressive addition on the PG hiring side. Is it fair to assume that your strategy is shifting more towards being a consulting partner for your clients? And is that where the industry is heading, and is that where you are hoping to garner more revenues, more margins? Yeah, in a sense, that is correct. This whole shift from being an execution partner to being a consulting partner is an agenda that we've been driving for the last couple of years. Of course, it's a long road, but we realized that some of that can be accelerated by hiring people, not just the postgraduate degree, but also the experience that they have between their undergrad and postgrad. We've also been looking at increasing the quantum of hiring from business schools and, you know, the IIMs campuses, people who have done a consulting stint or work of that nature. I think that is important. It dovetails well with the value proposition and solution-led strategy that we are taking, right? Where we need to be able to articulate the problems and opportunities in that domain really well. And as I said, we have seen some good traction of that approach. So today, I would say that seventy percent of our conversations that we initiate, whether it is through our demand generation channels or our reach outs or one-on-ones, they are all predicated on the particular solutions and value propositions. We just organized the 16th LatentView Analytics Roundtable event in Bay Area, and it happened just a week back. I just got back from from California last Sunday. And in some sense, it was the it was the most attended analytics roundtable event that we had ever conducted. We had almost a hundred and fifty plus participants. It was in the Menlo Park area, and, extremely well attended, and, we got very, very good feedback, for that event. And, a significant feature of that was like, it was all around, the value propositions and the solutions, and that's what we showcased during the demo. Of course, this is not part of the last quarter's update, but given that it has happened recently, I'm able to share this with you. So the traction for the solution, value proposition, consulting-led approach is strong, and we believe that therefore, we will continue to, hire people, right, with the kind of caliber and experience that will support that approach. Understood. Thanks, Rajan. Appreciate a lot of that and all the best going forward as well. Yeah, thanks, Hitesh. Thank you. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Hey, thanks, Asha. I think there is one question that's come up. Do you want to take that, Hasmukh? Is there a question from you, Hasmukh? Yes. So the question is from the line of Hasmukh from SUD Life. Please go ahead. Hi. Am I audible? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah. Thanks, thanks for the opportunity. Just one thing, one question on the client concentration front. So if I look at our, let's say, total revenue from the top 30 clients, that is almost at 92%. And that has, let's say, increased from 86% to 92% in last five to six quarters. So any thoughts around this number? Why so high client concentration? And do I consider in this difficult times, probably you might not be able to, let's say, get new client, but still, what's your view on this from, let's say, three years perspective also? From a three-year perspective, it should definitely get better. But, as you yourself pointed out, the growth in the last few quarters has been of an incremental nature, right? Working with the current stakeholders and the expansion of their initiatives and the small additional initiatives that they have launched. Even if we have one account in the CPG or in financial services or in industrial, so for example, the new initiatives have not been of the type of size and scale, right, that we would typically see. So it's been a bit neutral on that front, and therefore, the contribution to revenue from these new accounts that we add has also been minimal. So that continued to impact the concentration point that you bring out. In some sense, the concentration in this environment, right, is something that we're not worried about. I mean, it actually goes to show that the work that we are doing for some of the larger accounts that we work with is very important and critical to them. And not only are they retaining all of the work, they're also growing with us, right? So that gives us confidence that we are doing the right things with them. I think the concentration will come down as a little bit of that economic environment sentiment changes, right? And you start seeing more substantial spends from the new accounts that we have acquired in the recent times. Let's say if one would, let's say, would want to take a view of three years, then where this number for a style of insulated view should land at, from three years perspective? Hard to put a number right now, Hasmukh. It could... I don't know, maybe this is probably definitely lower than what it is. I mean, from our perspective, top five accounts, if it comes down to say the 60% mark, then that, that is good. I mean, because it means that we are also growing substantially with many of the other new accounts that we have been in. Typically, in the past, we used to, I'm talking about three, four years back, right? I mean, if you win an account with $250,000, it was really good, and we were looking at a trajectory of growth from $250,000 to $2 million over 18 months, 24 months kind of a time frame. More recently, two years back, when we were evaluating scenarios, we were saying that, "No, we should get in at least at a $500,000 mark, and we should get to the $2 million mark in a much shorter time frame, in a 12-month time frame itself." We are expecting that we will revert to that kind of a scenario as the economic environment improves. And as that happens, then the kind of percentage that I indicated should be possible within a three year time. Okay, understood. Thank you very much for that. That's it from me. Sure. Thank you so much. Okay, I don't see any questions, others. So, since you did hand it over to me earlier, let me just have a few closing remarks, and then I'll ask Raj to chip in as well. So overall, I would say that in the current economic environment, our performance in quarter two continues to give us a good deal of confidence. Our the number of opportunities that we have in our pipeline has gone up significantly in comparison to where we were at the same time last year. We have 100-plus open conversations, amounting to over $45 million in terms of opportunities. That is like an increase of almost 3.5 x in terms of number of conversations on almost 200% in terms of the value of the opportunities than what we had at the same time last year. But obviously, the time frame for closure is much, much longer than what we have experienced before. These opportunities continue to move very slowly through the pipeline because of the current economic environment, and that is what we are expecting, that things will change as some of the uncertainty is lifted. But all this has been possible on the back of several things I talked about earlier. All the investments that we have made into the sales and the business development front, the advisors that we have onboarded, the focus on capability building and value propositions, all of that. And also, as it was pointed out, the investments that we are making in bringing, you know, senior postgraduates and higher caliber people right into the organization. All of that is contributing to this. I think we are poised well. We do need to see the unlock happening, though, right, through the conversions in the remaining quarters. So, we will look at this very carefully and further calibrate in terms of what we do. Also, as I said, at a very recent roundtable event, that we had was a huge success in terms of attendance and, appreciation and all that. Obviously, we will want to see traction in terms of closures also on the back of that. So that gives us a great deal of confidence. But we are also mindful of the current, economic environment and the uncertainty, and therefore, we will be watchful in terms of, how we respond to all of this stuff, both from an investment and from a, cost control, margin expansion, and all of those perspectives. At this point in time, I would say that, we are encouraged by what we have seen in recent times, and, we continue to stay focused on the growth and profitability. With that, I'll pass it on to Raj for any concluding remarks of his. Thank you, Rajan. I mean, I don't have anything further or substantive to add to what you already mentioned. I think, the point that I already mentioned in the opening remarks around the fact that while, our growth rate and margin profile, both are, I would say, a little more neutral, or I would say this compared to where we would like them to be, right? The fact is that the economic environment and the overall sentiment continues to be a little sluggish. We are mindful of the fact that, you know, the investments that we are making at this point in time are disproportionate to the current level of business or the growth that we are demonstrating. However, we remain committed to deliver growth, which is industry-leading, in fact, better than the industry by wide weightage, you know, percentage points. We remain committed to delivering growth that is exceeding the industry benchmarks. We will, of course, you know, not take our eye off the ball in terms of where the business is spending. We continue to closely monitor all the operational KPIs, as well as sales force productivity. And we will take suitable actions whenever they are necessary. But at this point in time, we do believe that there are, you know, positive signs, as much as there are, I would say, negative sentiments. There are, you know, positive signs in terms of the demand for some of our value propositions as well as growth in the European region. And so we remain confident that we will be able to get back to the historical growth trajectory in a couple of quarters. With that, I would like to close this call and hand it back to Asha and the operator. Thank you. On behalf of Latent View Analytics Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, folks. Bye-bye. Thank you.