Business Analytics job market is in a boom in India and there is a huge shortage of skilled analyst in the market. This makes it a very attractive career option with good salary and growth.

Many premier institutes have recognized the importance analytics in India’s job market and have started executive programs for working executive in the field of Business Analytics. With a mushrooming of analytics courses, there obviously is an interest from students and working professionals. Yet, with a deluge of so many courses, choosing the right course is difficult. A right analytics course would provide value addition to an analytics professional helping him/her get faster promotions and growth, as well as valued in the industry. The course should provide an opportunity to develop the right mix of technical and management skills. We at Analytics India Magazine receive abundant queries from prospective students regarding the analytics courses in India. Most of these queries are related to strengths and shortcomings of various courses on offer. It is this abundance of inquiry that motivated us to write this report on analytics courses in India. The main focus is to compare some premium courses and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We compared the following 5 courses on myriad of attributes-

1. Executive Program in Business Analytics – IIM Calcutta
2. Certificate Programme in Business Analytics – ISB, Hyderabad
3. Certificate Programme in Business Analytics for Executives – IIM Lucknow
4. Business Analytics and Intelligence (BAI) – IIM Bangalore
5. MS in Business Analytics – University of Cincinnati

The first four courses are 1-year executive courses in analytics from premier business schools in India. The fifth course is a recognized international course which is included in order to provide a comparison between Indian and international courses. We would not discuss the brand image of these courses since all of these are from esteemed institutes and its upto the students to ascertain the brand value of these institutes subjectively. We rather focus attributes like course content, contact hours, faculty, analytics tools and other finer aspects.

Course Comparison

The fees of the four domestic courses range between 2.5 Lakhs to 5 lakhs rupees. The fee of the Executive Program in Business Analytics by IIM Calcutta is the lowest (2.5 Lakhs) while the Certificate Programme in Business Analytics by ISB, Hyderabad is the highest at 5 lakhs. Certificate Programme in Business Analytics by IIM Lucknow and Business Analytics and Intelligence (BAI) by IIM Bangalore each is of 4 lakhs. The differences in the fees can an important factor while accessing each course, yet one have to look at the cost vis-à-vis other factors. The important factor to look here is the number of contact hours, mode of teaching and faculty. Looking at these factors can help justify a higher fee. The contact hours of ISB is the highest among all courses here – at 400+ hours. The contact hours of other courses do not exceed 250-300 hours. Of these contact hours, its also important to look at the number of hours on campus versus online teaching. So on this criterion, ISB Hyderabad’s course have a definite edge, in terms of covering a larger depth and breadth of analytics in this 1 year. The IIM Calcutta course is solely an online course with no classroom hours on campus. On the other extreme, for IIM Bangalore’s course the participants have the option to take all courses at the campus or few online. For IIM lucknow course, around 30% of the contact classes are at campus. For ISB course, the number of contact hours on campus is almost 65% of total contact hours. Thus, on this criterion IIM Bangalore and ISB Hyderabad have an edge over other courses. According to ISB Hyderbad, “The program is a combination of classroom and Technology aided learning platform. Participants will typically be on campus for a 5 day schedule of classroom learning every alternate month for a span of 12 months, which would ideally be planned to include a weekend. In the month of no classroom connect, the classes will be conducted over a technology aided learning platform. The contact hours in this platform would be 24 hours a month and every alternate month.” The MS in Business Analytics from University of Cincinnati is available either full-time or part-time, there is no online training for the same. Most international courses follow the same format. Also, the fee comes out to be around $13,000/ semester which converts to Rs. 20 Lakhs approx. for 1year full time course.

Other finer features include, collaboration of foreign universities and international faculty for the course. In case of IIM Lucknow, the program is jointly taught by faculty from IIM Lucknow and the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, USA. ISB, Hyderabad is well known to employ foreign PhD’s in all their courses including CBA. An integral part of the CBA from ISB are interactions with industry speakers and regular visits to relevant organisations throughout the course. These sessions will be part of almost each module, and will be designed to enhance the understanding of the concepts of the module from a practitioner’s perspective, making it easier to apply the learning immediately.