Published on July 12, 2021
In Edge of Innovation

How Common Are INR 1Cr+ Salaries In Data Science In India?

By Kashyap Raibagi

Data has become central to organisations across every industry as they realise its potential in strategic decision-making or effective process automation. As a result, the analytics or data science function has witnessed significant growth in the past couple of years. Analytics professionals are in demand, and organisations are willing to pay competitive salaries to attract the best talent.

The scale of growth of any domain is evinced by the salaries drawn by experienced professionals or the growth in the proportion of experienced professionals drawing higher wages. Overall, the analytics professionals have seen an increase in their pay and the industry has seen more analytics professionals being hired in strategic positions to ensure enterprise-wide adoption. Even though the pandemic resulted in a decrease in the median salary of analytics professionals in 2021 compared to 2020, it was still higher than in 2019. With the industry showing considerable growth and an overall increase in the demand for analytics or data science post-pandemic, this salary is expected to grow even further in the coming years.

This report aims to analyse the data professionals hired at the highest level with the most competitive salaries. It provides an overview of the analytics professionals with a salary package greater than INR 1 Crore and their break up across parameters such as sectors, geographies, company type, education, years of experience, and gender representation. In addition, the report outlines how large companies are aligning their companies to be more data-driven and leveraging analytics in their strategy.

Methodology

The research presented in this report has been collected from publicly available data, including news reports, academic journals, job sites, and other information portals. The data was collated around the last week of June 2021.

Key Highlights

Around 1,400 data science professionals working in India are paid a salary of more than INR 1 Crore.
More than one in four (28.8%) of these professionals work in the IT & Consulting sector. This is followed by the BFSI and Internet & Technology sectors at 13.9% and 12.6%, respectively.
Almost two in five (38.7%) of these professionals work in Captive Centres established by MNCs in India.
Almost three in four (72.8%) of these analytics professionals are based in Bengaluru, Mumbai, or Delhi.
More than two in five (40.8%) of these analytics professionals are MBA postgraduates.
Almost four in five (79.0%) of these analytics professionals are employees with work experience greater than 15 years.
Only 17.5% of these analytics professionals are women.

The IT Services & Consulting sector has the highest share of employees (28.8%) with a salary package greater than INR 1 Crore.
- This is not surprising, considering that most data science professionals work in IT or consultancy firms.
- The professionals getting a salary greater than INR 1 Crore are working in some of the biggest IT companies – Domestic and MNCs.
BFSI at 13.9% and the Internet & Technology (E-commerce) at 12.6% are the second and third largest contributors to this pool of analytics employees.
- These two sectors have heavily invested in analytics over the last couple of years. Almost all of the processes in their value chain are digitised. In addition, both have realised the huge potential in using data for consumer analysis to improve revenue and customer service. Hence, both have been early adopters of data science with a significant market share within the domain. Their analytics functions are now maturing.
The Retail & CPG sector has 11.5% of the analytics professionals with salary packages greater than INR 1 Crore.
- These professionals are mainly working in the captive centres set up by multinational consumer companies.
The Engineering & Production industry and Pharma & Healthcare both have a significant market share in the data science industry, with many employees working in their analytics function. However, both of them have only 5.1% and 4.6% of the professionals, respectively, that earn more than INR 1 Crore per annum.
- Engineering & Manufacturing’s adoption of data science is very recent, and the analytics function has a relatively younger workforce as the analytics adoption is very recent.
- As for Pharma & Healthcare, analytics professionals are hired mainly at a technical level to develop applications to automate tasks. Very few enterprises within the sector hire analytics professionals at strategic positions to justify a salary package greater than INR 1 Crore.

All companies with hired analytics professionals for a salary greater than INR 1 Crore are big brands that operate across geographies. Some are domestic firms, while others are MNCs with analytics functions established as cost centres in India.

Captive centres provide the highest median salary as of 2021. Subsequently, they also have the highest share (38.7%) of analytics professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore.
- Captive centres are Global In-house Centres (GICs) for big MNCs with operations set up in India. These are set up by companies such as PayU, PepsiCo, Philips that have a portfolio of high margin products and services. Hence, they provide very competitive salaries.
Non-IT domestic firms come second with 24.7% of the INR 1 Crore+ salaried analytics professionals working for them.
- The category includes companies (in the traditional sectors) like Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto, and Mahindra & Mahindra that have ramped up their analytics adoption, and also enterprises (in data-driven sectors) like Myntra, Ola, and Edelweiss General Insurance.
MNC IT & KPO Services and Consulting Firms make up 16.7% and 14.0% of the analytics professionals salaried greater than INR 1 Crore.
- Many MNC IT & KPO Service providers like Dell EMC, Accenture, IBM, etc., and Consulting firms like BCG, Deloitte, KPMG, etc., have set up their analytics functions in India.
Very few (6.0%) Domestic IT companies provide a salary of more than INR 1 Crore to their analytics professionals.
- These are companies like Wipro and The Smart Cube.
Some of the MNCs headquartered in foreign countries like the US, the UK, etc., pay salaries to their Indian employees in their local currencies of USD, GBP, etc., which when converted to INR are greater than 1 Crore.

Analytics employees in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai host the highest share of analytics employees working in India. They also pay the highest median salary among all the top metropolitan cities in India. Likewise, almost three in four, 72.8%, of the analytics professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore work for Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, and Mumbai offices.

Bengaluru – the hub of analytics and data science – has the highest share (27.4%) of data science professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore.
- Bengaluru has the headquarters of all the top domestic IT companies like Wipro, Infosys, etc. In addition, all the leading MNCs, including IT and non-IT companies, have set up their analytics functions in Bengaluru as cost centres. These analytics units are huge and need leaders with extensive domain experience to run them.
Delhi hosts more than one in four (26.5%) analytics professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore.
Mumbai has 18.9% of the analytics professionals with a salary greater than 1 Crore+ working in the city.
- Mumbai has the highest median salary of analytics professionals and a sector-location niche that includes the top BFSI captives, investment companies, and domestic banks. As mentioned before, the financial sector has been investing heavily to improve its data science capabilities. Mumbai also has a higher cost of living.
Hyderabad hosts 10.7% of these analytics professionals, while Chennai and Pune host 6.8% and 6.3%, respectively.

More than two in five (40.8%) analytics professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore are MBA graduates.
- Around 15.9% are MBA postgraduates from top-ranked universities like IIM, ISB, etc. The remaining 24.9% are from other post-graduate institutes.
Around 28.7% of these analytics professionals have done their undergraduate in engineering.
- Only 3.8% are engineering undergraduates from top-tier universities like IIT, BITS, etc. This percentage is comparatively lower because many of these undergraduates have gone on to do their postgraduation in MBA also from top-tier universities. Hence, these employees are a part of the MBA (Top Ranked) category.
According to our Analytics India Industry Study 2021, Engineering undergraduates and MBA post-graduates from top-tier universities form only 5.8% of the total analytics employee share. However, they make up 19.7% of the analytics professionals who earn more than INR 1 Crore.
Non-engineering undergraduates make up 27.7% of the analytics professionals.
- These are primarily graduates with specialisations in computer applications, statistics, economics, commerce, mathematics, and other related fields.
Only 2.7% of the analytics professionals earning a salary more than INR 1 Crore has completed their PhD.

Years of Experience

Data science professionals with a salary greater than INR 1 Crore in India have a median work experience of 19.3 years.
Almost four in five (79.0%) of these professionals are employees with work experience greater than 15 years.
- The majority of these professionals work in the top management working as the CxO, VP/SVP, or Heads of Analytics/Data/Information for IT & Consulting, Banking, and FMCG enterprises.
- 25.1% of these analytics professionals are engineering graduates or MBA postgraduates from top-tier universities.
- 33.9% are with work experience between 15 to 20 years, 30.7% between 20 to 25 years, and 14.4% with work experience greater than 25 years.
21.0% are analytics professionals with work experience between 10 to 15 years.
- These professionals work as the Heads of Analytics or Business Intelligence Units or in the Top Management, mainly for IT & Consulting, Internet, Banking, or Software Product companies.
- One-third of these (31.3%) professionals are engineering graduates or MBA postgraduates from top-tier universities.
- 6.8% are with work experience between 10 to 12 years, and 14.3% have work experience between 12 to 15 years.

Only 17.5% of the analytics professionals with a salary greater than INR 100 Crore are females when women make 28.1% of the total analytics professionals.
- There is significant work to be done if we are to achieve equality (50%-50%) in terms of gender representation overall as well as for employees with higher salaries.
Women Analytics employees are still new in the workforce in India, with a median employee experience of 6.3 years compared to 7.6 years overall. Overall women also receive a median salary of 30.9% lesser men.
- More representation of female analytics professionals at strategic positions can help improve gender ratio and equal pay.

Conclusion

The analytics industry has seen significant growth over the last few years and is predicted to grow in the coming years as well. There is increased adoption in enterprises across sectors as well as within enterprises across its departments. With the growth in its adoption, enterprises are seeing an increasing need of hiring analytics professionals at strategic positions. These professionals are not just needed to ensure a well-planned analytics strategy to increase revenue but to also ensure that this growth is safe and sustainable.

As of today, there are around 1,400 analytics professionals in India that earn a salary greater than INR 1 Crore. They make up around 0.2% of total analytics professionals and around 3.0% of the analytics professionals with work experience greater than 15 years. With the current salary and industry trend that we have observed through our reports at AIM Research, we anticipate this share to grow. While still far from being qualified as a mature industry, the increase in salaries through hiring analytics professionals at strategic positions will help it move in that direction.

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Kashyap currently works as a Tech Journalist at Analytics India Magazine (AIM). Reach out at kashyap.raibagi@analyticsindiamag.com