Data science training institutes that started in the COVID era

The median salary of data science professionals in India is INR 16.8 lakhs per annum, a jump of 25.4 percent compared to 2021, as per a recent study by AIMResearch. A career in data science is highly aspirational for many in this country. Even experienced professionals are making a transition to data science due to the lucrative opportunities it holds. 

Because of this high demand, several data science training platforms have been introduced include UpGrad, Great Learning, Jigsaw Academy etc. Especially during the last two years, when the whole world was under COVID-induced restrictions, a new crop of upskilling platforms came up to help aspirants transition to an analytics career.

Scaler

Scaler was founded by  Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena in 2019. Along with offering computer science-related training, the institute also offers a data science and machine learning program. 

The company claims that its data science program provides personalised learning, live classes with product industry veterans, business case studies with real-world datasets along with over 600 partner employers and placement assistance. 

The curriculum teaches various important data science topics such as Python, probability and statistics, data acquisition and unstructured data, data visualisation with Tableau etc.

In 2020, Scaler raised  $20 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia India and Tiger Global. At that time, the company said it would use the capital to scale up enrollment and launch its product in new markets, along with improving its curriculum and live teaching product. In February 2022, the edtech company raised $55 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightrock India. Saxena has said that it will use the capital for expansion, inorganic growth and improving its technology platform.

In June this year, Scaler announced the launch of its education platform in the US and said that it would feature industry veterans from some of the top tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft as instructors, mentors and career coaches.

Jio Institute

In 2019, Reliance Foundation's Jio Institute announced that it will be launching graduate courses in artificial intelligence , data sciences and digital media and integrated marketing communications for its first academic year by 2021. As per the institute's website, Jio Institute's programmes will begin from the academic year 2022-23.

As per the website, the Post Graduate Programme in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science will provide a solid foundation in the core concepts of artificial intelligence and data science, along with a deep understanding of their applications.

Some of the topics included in this course are probability and statistics for AI, databases and data warehouses, big-data engineering, data visualisation, machine learning, NLP, computer vision etc.

Masai School

Masai School was founded by Prateek Shukla, Nrupul Dev and Yogesh Bhat in 2019. Initially, they had built a military-style coding institute based on the 9-9-6 intensive training regime. It received a positive response, and later, courses like data analytics also became a part of the curriculum.

In 2021, Masai School announced that it had raised $5 million in a Series A equity funding round led by Omidyar Network India and joined by Unitus Ventures, India Quotient and AngelList India. 

In October 2021, Masai School said that it had raised funding from 21 angel investors like Kunal Shah of Cred, Paytm's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Delhivery's Mohit Tandon, and Vipin Pathak of Cars24 among others. The funding amount was not disclosed.

Hero Vired

In 2021, the Hero Group launched Hero Vired, an edtech focused on working professionals and higher education aspirants in India. The Munjal family committed over USD 10 million to provide participants with overall professional development that makes them job market-ready. It has programs in areas such as data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, full-stack development, game design etc.

Hero Vired says that the Integrated Program in Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence will help to develop an in-depth understanding of machine learning methods while building a solid foundation in mathematics and statistics. Students will learn to use big datasets and extract meaningful information from seemingly unstructured data. Some of the topics the course will cover include Python and ML foundations, foundations of Statistics, NLP, deep learning frameworks, application of deep learning in computer vision etc.