In this independent study, we tried to recognize the concentration of analytics professionals and employers across various cities in India as well as infer emerging trends in this area. Below is a snapshot of the major takeaways of the research.
Analytics as a domain cuts across industry verticals and is growing fast globally. With India supplying business analytics capabilities to huge MNCs at the best possible performance to cost ratio, the scope for a professional in this field is phenomenal.
Bangalore led the way for other Indian cities, providing the first analytics centers with a skilled talent pool. Gradually, cities, such as Delhi/Gurgaon (NCR), Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, emerged as good breeding grounds in India for global companies to set up their analytics centers of excellence. NCR now accounts for 29% of all employees working in the analytics area, making it the most preferred destination for analytics practice. It is closely followed by Bangalore (26%) and Mumbai (21%).
Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore universities are the alma-maters of one-eighth (or 12.5%) of all current professionals in analytics. IIM Calcutta and Bangalore provide 3% professionals in analytics, followed by IIT Bombay and BITS (another 3%). 63% analytics professional have a work experience between 3 to 10 years corroborating the fact that analytics is relatively the latest skillset in Indian perspective.
There are three significant modes in which analytics is being utilized by organizations. Various organizations, ranging from HDFC and Vodafone to Reliance Retail and ICICI have set up their own in-house analytics team. Secondly, a number of third parties IT/ITES service providers have started offering analytics solutions. They continue to provide analytics as a service in a global delivery model, to drive cost-effective deployment in partnership with on-shore stakeholders.
The top 10 analytics employers in India are Genpact, TCS, IBM, CTS, HP, Accenture, Infosys, HSBC, Wipro and Dell. Clearly, third party vendors form the bulk of employment in analytics from the Indian context. This is confirmed by our estimate that 45% of all professionals work in companies having upwards of 10,000 employees.
Contrast it with global top 10 employers in analytics – IBM, Accenture, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Bank of America, HP, Citi, SAP and Wells Fargo. Five out of these ten organizations consume analytics in-house. Although all these firms have offshore units in India, they still shy away from offshoring high-end vocations like analytics to India.
Third, and the most significant, is the mushrooming of various niche start-ups providing innovative solutions and capabilities in analytics. We estimated that there are upwards of 500 start-ups in India providing analytics or solutions that heavily utilize analytics. 92% of these start-ups have employee strength of less than 200, of which 27% have less than 10 employees. Bangalore is the preferred destination for start-ups with 31% of these start-ups based out of Bangalore. It is followed by NCR (26%) and Mumbai (18%).
Over the years, the adoption of analytics and business intelligence and the market in India will grow at a rapid pace catering to both domestic and international markets.
