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Techie Founder Of Profitable Data Analytics Firm Is India’s Newest Billionaire Posted on : Nov 30 - 2021

India’s downcast IPO market, battered by the lackluster listing of payments giant One97 Communications, touted as India’s biggest-ever public issue, revived last week when the little-known Latent View Analytics made a sizzling stock market debut.

Latent View’s modest $80 million (6 billion rupees) IPO was oversubscribed 338 times. Shares of the Chennai data analytics firm listed at a 160% premium to its issue price of 197 rupees and are up a further 226% since. One97 Communications fell 9% on listing and has declined 9%.

For all its mighty brand power-One97 Communications owns popular payments app Paytm-the payments giant can’t match up to the data analyzer in one crucial aspect: Latent View is profitable.

The bootstrapped firm recorded a net profit of $14 million (914.6 million rupees) on revenue of $45 million (3.3 billion rupees) in fiscal 2021, and a net profit of $10 million (728.4 million rupees) on revenue of $44 million (3.3 billion rupees) in fiscal 2020.

“We’ve never paid out a dividend,” says Venkatraman Viswanathan, 51, Latent View’s low-profile cofounder and chairman, speaking to Forbes from San Francisco, where he was on a business trip. “All the profits have been re-invested into the business.”

Investors have applauded that approach, making Viswanathan a billionaire. His 60% stake is worth $1.01 billion. Together with his wife and fellow cofounder Pramadwathi Jandhyala’s 8% stake, the couple are worth a combined $1.2 billion

Latent View offers data analytics, predictive analytics and data engineering and digital solutions to its customers, most of whom are based in the U.S., a market that contributes to 90% of the firm’s revenue. Viswanathan is looking to expand more into Europe through his offices in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. The IPO proceeds he explains will be used for expanding the client base and offerings through internal growth as well as acquisitions.

The firm is also hoping to take a bigger bite out of the $174 billion (fiscal 2020) global data analytics market, which is expected to grow at an 18% compounded rate, touching $333 billion by fiscal 2024, according to analysts at Investmentz, a Mumbai research and advisory portal. View more