Chennai-based IT services firm LatentView Analytics, through its AI Centre of Excellence (CoE), is developing an AI chief of staff that could eventually replace humans in such roles, according to its CEO, Rajan Sethuraman.
Speaking to this newspaper after the company’s Q2 earnings call, Sethuraman said, “The AI CoE is a framework we are using to bring together and develop the best ideas from across the organisation. Over the past two years, we have been building several AI- and GenAI-enabled solutions, each developed by different verticals within the company. As this ecosystem is evolving so rapidly, we decided to consolidate our efforts and view R&D through that lens.”
He added, “We felt the architecture for our various GenAI solutions should be evaluated, experimented with and owned by one central team. They are developing a range of new solutions and value propositions. One such experiment is the creation of a digital twin to replicate the role of a chief of staff.”
The company has signed three projects with US-based firms, valued between $2,50,000 and $5,00,000, and has four more projects worth around $1 million each in the pipeline.
Sethuraman said, “Margin-wise, we performed well, but we have incurred significant costs on three fronts—marketing expenses, which are cyclical; visa costs accrued this year; and go-to-market hiring. These are the main reasons for the rise in costs.”
LatentView has also announced a collaboration with US-based Databricks, which offers a unified platform for data, analytics and AI. “Databricks’ ambition is to grow at 60% year-on-year over the next three to five years. This year, our own data business is expected to grow by 80%. Last year, we generated $11 million in revenue; this year, we expect to reach $19 million,” he said.
Discussing nearshore operations, Sethuraman said the company currently employs 40 people across facilities in Canada, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, and plans to scale that to 100 within a year.
On the impact of automation, he remarked, “A very large number of jobs will be automated, and I don’t think there’s any avoiding that.” However, he added that automation would also create new roles. “We will need people to design agentic architectures, and to maintain, fine-tune, supervise and validate them.”
LatentView has also appointed Divesh Singla, a leader in Global Capability Centres (GCCs), as an advisor as it looks to expand its GCC services in India. “This year, we expect to generate around $2–3 million in revenue from new GCC clients in India,” Sethuraman said.