it extracting information from the volumes of data requires a combination of statistical and computational skills that i felt i had viswanathan bounced his ideas for an analytics startup with fellow iim entrepreneurs and they provided encouragement and support as for my family my wife was supportive the others werent really sure what it all meant he grins things fell into place almost immediately for the fledgling startup ford credit read about latentview in an iit alumni magazine and asked viswanathan to set up an offshore team of credit risk analytics people who could manage the north america lending portfolio almost immediately after viswanathan acquired max new york life the insurer as a client for predictive analysis of customer lapsation getting your first employees is a challenge i was selling an opportunity many didnt think the risk was worth it this is not a business like normal software development you just cant hire from software engineers and expect them to pick up what needs to be done he says the company decided it was more viable to hire freshers from good engineering colleges and train them in analytics we went to the iits and bits pilani we had to sell our vision there as well but the people we hired from there are still with us and doing well after two years of heady growth things turned shockingly grim in 200809 we just didnt have enough new business flowing in with the poor economic environment says viswanathan but we kept investing in the us market and finally we saw things turn around we have been able to sign multiyear million dollar deals since last year and this will give us an opportunity to really grow he says