Top 5 Analytics Courses in India

In this article, Analytics India Magazine investigates five courses on Analytics being offered by premier institutes of India.

• Business Analytics and Intelligence (BAI) – IIM Bangalore
• Executive Program in Business Analytics – IIM Calcutta
• Advanced Certificate Program in Business Analytics – IIT Bombay
• Master of Management, IISC Bangalore
• Post Graduate Certificate in Research and Analytics – MICA Ahmedabad

Data Visualization: The Next Science

There is a growing need in the industry to have meaningful tools and methodologies that can combine the principles of visualization with powerful applications and large data sets to create sophisticated images and animations.

Formal analytics has given almost no guidance to this exposure and it is unclear how well effective visualization can be fitted into any of the structures of analytics as applied in modern context. There is rarely a single visualization that answers all questions. Instead, the ability to generate appropriate visualizations quickly is the key.

The next decade or so is envisaged by many as the golden age of Data Visualization wherein dedicated vocation and tutoring would be conceived “to affect thro’ the Eyes what we fail to convey to the public through their word-proof ears”.

Analytics India Industry Study (2012)

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.

NCR now accounts 29% of all employees working in analytics area, making it the most preferred destination for analytics practice. It is closely followed by Bangalore (26%) and Mumbai (21%).

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%).

Interview – Parthasarathy Vallabhajosyula, Co-founder at Analytics Quotient

In this interview with Analytics India Magazine, Parthasarathy Vallabhajosyula talks about Analytics Quotient and the analytics industry as a whole.

Well-designed info-graphics and animated data expose new patterns and relationships contained within a data set which creates an ‘instant wow’ and help managers understand data simply.

Getting people into the company at the right time and equipping them with key skills is fundamental to the success of our business, and we are always focused on getting this right.

Interview – Galit Shmueli, SRITNE Chaired Professor of Data Analytics at ISB Hyderabad

In an interview with Analytics India Magazine, Galit Shmueli, the SRITNE Chaired Professor of Data Analytics of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad talks about the current state of analytics education in India.

In addition to statisticians, applied mathematicians, and data miners, the need in the industry is for BA champions to direct the analytic efforts in promising directions and to evaluate their impact from a business perspective.

From my own experience, the most important aspect of BA courses is giving students hands-on experience with real data and real problems through team projects.

BA relationships between industry and academia in the West are much stronger: companies like Yahoo, IBM and Google sponsor research and teaching endeavors. I have not seen such relationships in India.

Interview – Prithvijit Roy CEO and Co-founder at BRIDGEi2i

Prithvijit Roy speaks with Analytics India Magazine on the Bridgei2i, the emerging trends and everything else analytics.

The gap is in terms of big organizations not being able to institutionalize analytics and small organizations not able to adopt it at a reasonable scale. Availability of cloud-based apps, can make adoption of analytics affordable and help small organizations test waters before they make big investment commitments in analytics. For the biggies the opportunity lies in going beyond discrete applications into creating a system for data driven decision making, spanning across all facets of the enterprise.

The demand for analytics in many organizations is still a latent demand. It is buried in a business problem they face without knowing this could be solved based on data and analytics. Hence the most significant challenge today is to make businesses aware how they can monetize their information assets to multiply value manifold.

Interview – Sudarshan Gangrade, Head of Analytics at hoopos.com

Sudarshan Gangrade talks with Analytics India Magazine on his experience with analytics and how it is being used at Hoopos.com.

Another issue faced is the fact that organizations often end up mixing up technology and analytics, thus making the analytics function less effective.

Data collection in the online space will continue to face challenges in the near future given the nascent stage that Indian online consumer behaviour is at. The challenge further is that there is no historical data to be able to extrapolate the offline consumer behaviour data to online behaviour. Having said that, with the kind of advanced web analytics tools today available, ecommerce companies will do well to build their own understanding of shoppers by tying browsing behaviour directly with end conversion data.

Genpact and IMT, Ghaziabad sign MoU to develop an analytics elective

IMT Ghaziabad would develop and design the course in detail whereas Genpact will add the industry perspective in the course conceptualization, skills development and the training faculty. Genpact will also provide the necessary support through guest lectures and arranging mid-term and extended internship projects for the IMT Ghaziabad students in order to gain experience on real time data, projects and research papers at Genpact.

Interview – Snehamoy Mukherjee of Axtria

In an exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine, Snehamoy Mukherjee of Axtria talks about his stint with Technopak as Analytics Practice head.

There is a function which is used in Time Series Modeling which is called “Lag”. In India everything that you see suffers from the “lag” function. For Analytics, the lag is very significant, running into a decade or even more and the market suffers from three primary disadvantages: –

Lack of urgency- Indian corporates suffer from complacency and policy paralysis- it is not just the Indian government and there is complete lack of a sense of urgency in any work that is undertaken. Indian corporates need to shake off this sense of complacency and paralysis to be able to move forward-in any direction, leave alone Analytics. I found that the Indian market severely lacked a sense of urgency, to adopt world class methods in decision sciences to help them move ahead in business.

Lack of awareness- Indian corporates suffer from a lack of awareness. Educating them on the benefits of Analytics can only be fruitful, if there is a fundamental understanding of what Analytics can achieve at the highest level and a willingness to be led down that path. Oftentimes, we suffer from a “know-it all” attitude which is at the bane of most of our problems and not surprisingly, we have lots of “know-it-all” people sitting in important positions who are handicapped by their own lack of awareness.

Lack of budgets and empowerment- Not surprisingly, the few people who are aware and want to make a difference are hamstrung by a lack of budgets and the “power” to sign-off on projects. Many proposals get discarded even before they see the light of the day, as there are several levels of approvals to be taken, by different layers of stakeholders.

Analytics – the next Career Wave

On analysing these patterns and correlations, new, powerful and game changing insights can be garnered, giving decision- making a whole new dimension.   Therefore analytics in its sophistication nullifies decision making based on gut feelings, instead allows one to make data driven decisions. It is this aspect of analytics that Redwood Associates believes that will bring about a transformational revolution in the present business sphere.

The scope for growth in the Analytics industry is tremendous. For example, every organization today has a website, therefore each of these organizations have a need for web analytics to measure their online performance and ROI. Thus every organization has a need for an analyst. But the analytics industry is still an up and coming one and the talent pool that is available is not sufficient to meet the demand.