Deep insights: Venkat Viswanathan, founder-chairman, LatentView Analytics

Promoters believe they know their business entirely until they see the data, which is black and white, and then they sit up, Viswanathan tells Pavan Lall

Amongst all the unicorns that listed last year and had blockbuster, billion-dollar IPOs, the most low-profile, unrecognised and under-publicised would arguably be Venkat Viswanathan and his wife Pramad Jandhyala’s Chennai-based LatentView Analytics. If companies are anything like their founders, then Viswanathan justifies that parallel, turning up in his everyman office shirt, khaki trousers and beat-up shoes. There’s no sign of being a millionaire, much less an entrepreneur who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The bald-pated Viswanathan is meeting me for lunch at the Four Seasons in Mumbai. “Nice hairstyle,” I say. “You too,” he smiles, looking at my equally