NASSCOM president R. Chandrashekhar releases ‘Accenture’s report big success with Big Data’ at the 2nd edition of Big Data and Analytics Summit 2014 in Hyderabad on Friday. He was flanked by Managing Directors Accenture Analytics Michael Svilar and Arnab Chakraborty is seen. Photo: Mohammed Yousuf
Analytics firms in India will soon face a shortage of 2 lakh data scientists
While analytics and big data companies were recording an annual growth of almost 40 per cent, the sector was witnessing an acute shortage of professionals, said industry experts at a one-day event organised by Nasscom here on Friday.
Foreseeing the need for such professionals, Nasscom had begun an Analytics Interest Group of six members to address the issue.
“Presently, there are only 10,000-15,000 analytics and data experts in the country, and there will be a shortage of two lakh data scientists in the country over the next few years,” CEO of Fractal and a member of the Analytics Interest Group, Srikanth Velamakanni, told the gathering at the Big Data and Analytics Summit 2014.
“We are working with the industry and the academia – engaging with the ISB, IIMs and top B-schools – on how to develop talent in this field. We are also conducting workshops and certificate courses for young graduates. This is a lucrative field as a data scientist or analytical expert can earn double the salary of an IT professional.”
Ashwin Mittal, president of Blue Ocean, a data analytics firm, said the demand for data professionals can be gauged from the fact that the number of big data providers in the country grew from 300 to almost 600 in the last two years. Blue Ocean jointly released a report with NASSCOM during the event pegged the Indian analytics markets at above $2 billion by 2018.
“We are conducting a workshop called ‘paatshaala’. As part of this, we train a large pool of engineers for a period of 4-8 weeks in analytics,” said Mr. Mittal.
Cyient’s assistant general manager (Analytics) Bhoopathi Rapolu said they were on the look-out for potential in the field by visiting B-Schools.
“There is lack of education on analytics in traditional educational institutions. Specialised training is important for these skills and some of the corporate companies are doing it. There is a lot of demand for data scientists since their services are required in many sectors,” Mr. Rapolu said.