Published on June 11, 2021
In Insight Inquiries

Study: Analytics and Data Science Jobs in India: June 2021

by Kashyap Raibagi

Design by Study: Analytics and Data Science Jobs in India: June 2021

The analytics job report, presented by Analytics India Magazine (AIM), provides a broad study of the data science job landscape – covering profiles and roles that require analytics competencies and skills. The research provides a comprehensive view of the talent market that was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and its recovery since the lockdown restrictions were lifted. The report highlights the upswing in analytics jobs in the post-pandemic world and factors that have led to it.

This report also outlines which functional analytics skills and programming languages are currently most in-demand in the market. The report provides insights for recruiters and hiring companies to study the demand for skills across the analytics function. They can identify and close any capability gaps across workforces. By highlighting the talent hotspots in the country, the report enables organisations to build a steady talent pipeline from various regions or cities.

Benefits and Key Takeaways

We hope the report is a handy point of reference for aspiring professionals, industry experts, and think tanks. As a result of the unfortunate pandemic, the analytics space in 2020 witnessed changes and churn in terms of job losses and a slowdown in job creation. The accelerated adoption of data science/AI technologies that began immediately after the 1^st wave of the pandemic, and the renewed business activity of companies, which led to the hiring of analytics professionals, are crucial factors that have led to an upswing in data science jobs. The enthusiasm and optimism around the analytics function in India continue to remain high, and the industry is cautiously anticipating what the future holds for data science and jobs within this domain.

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Introduction

This Job Study is a holistic analysis of the Indian Analytics and Data Science jobs and skills landscape. This study/report covers the top job trends in the analytics space, specifically open jobs at a given point in time. It provides a detailed break-up and analysis of jobs by certain criteria, such as cities, industries, experience levels, technologies/tools, and salary hierarchies. The report provides details and analysis of the types of companies that are recruiting key talent in the data science domain. The report identifies reasons for significant shifts or changes in hiring trends across the criteria defined above.

Please find reports from previous years here:
2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017

Top Trends In Analytics And Data Science

(Source for the job figures and trends below: Leading career portals, including Naukri.com, LinkedIn jobs section, and Monsterindia.com)

Open Data Science Jobs Trend (April 2014 to June 2021)

Although it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of open analytics job openings for a given month, around 137,870 open jobs were available at the time of reporting in the 2nd week of June 2021, according to the analysis carried out by AIMResearch. This is the highest number of analytics jobs advertised in India (since AIM Research started recording these numbers in April 2015)
- These open jobs are available jobs to be filled in the data analytics function at any given point in time and not the absolute number of new jobs created each month.
The analytics jobs figure for June 2021 witnessed a 47.1% increase in open jobs requirement compared to the same period last year (June 2020).
- Last year, the pandemic caused a large decline in jobs after the declaration of the lockdown in March 2020. The open jobs fell to an average of 93,755 in June 2020.
There was a drop or contraction in open jobs year-on-year in the months of June and July 2020 – 10.6% and 17.5%, respectively. This contraction is due to the recessionary environment that was caused by the unfortunate pandemic.
- From a peak of 109,000 analytics jobs in February 2020, the open jobs figure fell to a low of 82,576 in June 2020, a drop of 24.2%.
However, after June, the analytics job market took a U-turn once India started lifting its lockdown restrictions from June 2020.
- From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of open analytics jobs increased by 67.0%.
The circumstances presented by the pandemic has led to an increase in the number of open analytics jobs post-lockdown.
- Many analytics professionals had to be laid off during the lockdown because of the economic uncertainty created by the pandemic. However, as companies recover from the Covid impact, many of these positions need to be backfilled, leading to a significant increase in the analytics jobs advertised post lockdown.
- To add to that, the pandemic has accelerated digital/AI adoption to a great extent. The country observed a 45% increase in AI adoption rate, according to a PwC report. The report also said that around 94% of organisations in India now believe that AI will help create more opportunities than be a threat to their industry. Companies thus think that this is the right time to invest in improving their digital capabilities, increasing the demand for analytics professionals.
In June 2021, India contributed to 9.4% of the total global analytics job openings. This is a significant jump from 7.2% of total global job openings in January 2020. India’s share of global analytics jobs has increased because of the following three factors:
- An evolving analytics domain in India evidenced by a year-on-year increase in funding in Indian analytics start-ups and development of niche analytics capabilities, including Data Analytics, Digital, Cloud Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
- Organisations are investing in the development of enhanced analytics capabilities in India. This has led to Domestic IT firm, Semiconductor and Electronics, International Technology, and Software corporations advertising a greater no. of open jobs in India (v/s globally).
- India became a leading adopter of AI among all major economies (including the US, Japan, and the UK) amid the pandemic.
The ten leading organisations with the greatest number of analytics jobs advertised in August are dominated by the MNC and Domestic IT & KPO organisations – Accenture, Capgemini, IBM India, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, Fiserv, Cognizant Technology, Eaton Technologies, Dell International, and Mphasis.
97.0% of analytics jobs advertised in India are full-time, signifying the strengthening of the Indian analytics hiring market. Just 3% of the jobs form part-time, internship or contractual jobs – similar to January 2020 and the overall trend of 2019, when an approximate 97.5% full-time and 2.5% part-time jobs were advertised.
The top designations advertised are Analytics Specialist, Data Scientist, Decision Science Manager, Business Analyst, Analytics Manager, Statistical Modelling, Statistical Analyst, Marketing Research Analytics, and Operations Analytics Manager.

Analytics Jobs By Cities

In terms of cities, Bengaluru once again accounted for the maximum proportion of open jobs, contributing to 27.9% of analytics jobs in India in June 2021. This is a significant increase from August 2020, when the percentage was at 23.2%. Bengaluru remains the preferred hiring destination in India for analytics jobs for the last 4-5 years.
- This is evident because Bengaluru is home to the maximum number of analytics start-ups that received the highest funding for three consecutive years (after removing the single largest funding for 2019) to 2020 – translating to a greater proportion of job openings in the city.
- Moreover, most of the Technology, IT, and Boutique Analytics firms run most of their Digital, Analytics, and Data Science operations from the city, propelling the city to the top of the list of preferred locations for open jobs.
Delhi/NCR stood second, contributing 19.1% of the analytics jobs in India in June 2021, a slight decrease from 20.3% in August 2020 and from 21.2% in January 2020.
- The proportion of jobs in Delhi as of June 2021 has been the lowest since 2018, indicating a shift in location preferences for those companies advertising analytics jobs.
Approximately 12.2% of the analytics jobs in June 2021 advertised were for the location of Mumbai, down from 14.8% in August 2020. This decrease in proportion is largely due to the base effect of the total number of jobs. While the overall number of analytics jobs (across major cities) from August 2020 to June 2021 increased by 22.3%, Mumbai’s jobs increased by only 0.7%. Despite this, Mumbai still holds the third-highest proportion of analytics jobs as of June 2021.

Analytics Jobs By Sector Or Industry (Excluding Analytics Jobs In The IT Sector)

Banking & Financial Sector: The financial sector continues to be the biggest influencer in the analytics job market, with 27.8% of all analytics jobs in June 2021 advertised by BFSI firms. However, this proportion has been seeing a declining trend since 2018 (when it was at 41.0%). There has been a sharp decline of 8.4 percentage points from August 2020 (when it was at 36.2%) to the current levels.
Energy & Utilities: The proportion of jobs in the Energy & Utilities sector increased significantly from August 2020 to June 2021. The sector advertised 17.3% of the overall analytics jobs in June 2021, up from 9.5% in August 2020 and 10.6% in January 2020. Moreover, the June 2021 proportion has been the highest since 2018.
Media & Entertainment: The Media & Entertainment sector also saw a sharp rise in analytics jobs from 9.3% in August 2020 to 17.3% in June 2021. The sector has observed a steady rise in the proportion of analytics jobs over the years as there is a greater demand for analytics in the digital media and online streaming sub-vertical.
E-commerce: The proportion of analytics jobs advertised by the E-commerce sector dropped to 11.6% in June 2021 from 15.0% in August 2020. This comes after e-commerce saw the largest increase in the proportion of analytics jobs compared to other sectors from January 2021 to August 2021 (4.2 percentage points).
Telecom Industry: The proportion of jobs in the Telecom sector decreased slightly to 4.3% in June 2021, down from 5.5% in August 2020, which in turn is an increase from 4.6% in January 2020.
Pharma & Healthcare Industry: This sector saw decreased analytics jobs from 16.7% in August 2020 to 12.9% in June 2021. The hiring in this industry has seen a continuous upward trend, with analytics jobs increasing from 11.1% in 2018 and 12.6% in 2019 to 16.1% in January 2020. The decline from August 2020 to June 2021 is largely due to the base effect of the total number of jobs.
Retail & CPG: The proportion of open jobs advertised for the Retail & CPG sector is 5.6% in June 2021, up from 3.8% in August 2020 and down from 6.8% in January 2020.
Automobile: The proportion of analytics jobs advertised in the Automobile sector has shrunk to 3.2% in June 2021, from 3.5% in August 2020 and from 3.7% in January 2020. Moreover, the June 2021 proportion is the lowest since 2018.
Travel & Hospitality: The sector advertised no analytics jobs in June 2021, down from a minor proportion of 0.4% jobs posted in August 2020

Experience Requirement For Analytics Jobs

**Share of Open Jobs by Work Experience**

The year 2020 began with an increase in the proportion of mid-senior and senior-level open jobs in analytics. This trend has continued till June 2021, with a greater proportion of senior-level jobs advertised.
- The proportion of jobs for 7 – 10 years’ experience range increased to 16.3% in June 2021, up from 14.9% in August 2020, 12.5% in January 2020 and 6.7% in 2019. This increase took place after a drop from 10.5% in 2018 to 6.7% in 2019.
- Similarly, the proportion of jobs for 10 to 15 years of experience increased to 12.5% in June 2021 from 11.0% in August 2020. Before this, the proportion of analytics jobs in this bracket doubled to 8.6% in January 2020 from 4.3% in 2019.
- The proportion of jobs for analytics professionals with greater than 15 years of experience also saw a big jump to 8.9% in June 2021, up from 4.9% in August 2020, 2.8% in January 2020 and just 1.0% from 2019
This secular increase in the proportion of jobs for senior-level positions is due to the consolidation in analytics function in India:
- The trend of a greater proportion of jobs for experienced professionals endures despite an overall recessionary environment, signifying a maturing Analytics and Data Science domain in India.
Almost one in ten (8.9%) analytics jobs were advertised for an experience level greater than 15 years. This highlights the hiring of leadership roles across the Data Science domain instead of roles focused on delivery or programme management. This is further emphasised by the combined proportion of 37.7% of jobs for analytics positions with experience greater than seven years (highest since 2018).
Correspondingly, 62.3% of analytics job openings are for professionals with less than seven years of job experience. This shows a declining trend from 2019, and the proportion is the lowest since 2018:
- For the experience category of 5-7 years, the proportion of jobs has marginally increased to 18.7% in June 2021 from 18.6% in August 2020. This proportion was 19.3% in January 2020.
- For the experience category of 2-5 years, the proportion of jobs has decreased to 18.9% in June 2021 from 20.6% in August 2020 and 24.1% in January 2020.
- For the experience category of 1-2 years, the proportion of jobs has decreased to 13.0% in June 2021 from 16.6% in August 2020 and 17.9% in January 2020.
- For the experience category of 0-1 years, the proportion of jobs has decreased to 11.8% in June 2021 from 13.3% in August 2020 and 14.7% in January 2020.

Analytics Jobs By Tools & Technologies

The figures researched for the jobs across the categories of Tool and Technologies are a proportion of the Total Analytics Jobs.

The demand for Python professionals continues to remain the highest, followed by Java/JavaScript.
- Almost 26.3% of advertised jobs require Python as a core skill in June 2021, a negligible decline from 26.6% from August 2020 but an increase from 18.5% in January 2020.
- The proportion of Java/Javascript jobs has declined to 19.6% in June 2021, down from 22.5% in August 2020, but an increase from 16.0% in January 2020.
- R skills come third at 6.3% (down from 9.6% in August 2020), and demand for SAS skills increased to 4.8% in June 2021 (up from 4.2% in August 2020)
Among Dashboarding and BI tools, Tableau skills are most in-demand (increasing to 11.9% in June 2021 from 10.8% in August 2020 and from 7.6% in January 2020), followed by Microsoft Power BI (increasing to 8.9% in June 2021 from 6.5% in August 2020, and from 3.3% in January 2020). QlikView also saw a significant increase in its demand (increasing to 6.2% in June 2021 from 1.9% in August 2020 and 1.4% in January 2020)

Salaries Advertised For Analytics Jobs

**Share of Open Jobs by Salary Brackets**

The median salary advertised for analytics jobs in India as of June 2021 is INR 9.7 Lakhs per annum, a slight increase from August 2020 when it was 9.5 lakhs per annum and from January 2020 when it was 9.4 Lakhs per annum. Advertised salaries tend to be lower than actual salaries.
There has been a slight increase in the proportion of advertised jobs with salaries greater than 15 Lakhs per annum from August 2020 to June 2021, but this proportion is lesser than that in January 2020:
- 13.5% of all jobs in June 2021 advertised a salary greater than Rs. 15 Lakhs as opposed to 13.1% in August 2020. In January 2020, this proportion was 13.8%.
- 11.1% of all advertised jobs in June 2021 offer a salary between Rs. 15-25 Lakhs as against 10.3% in August 2020 and 10.5% in January 2020.
A negligible number of jobs advertised were for salaries greater than 50 Lakhs per annum:
- Around 2.1% of all advertised jobs in June 2021 offer a salary between Rs. 25-50 Lakhs. Only 0.2% offer a salary between 50-75 Lakhs per annum.
- None of the jobs advertised in June 2021 was for salaries greater than 75 Lakhs per annum.
- The lower proportion of advertised jobs in the higher salary ranges is attributed to employers withholding salary details of the higher paying analytics jobs – this provides employers more negotiating power at the time of salary discussions – this is all the more significant during the recessionary environment as there are proportionately fewer jobs, more candidates, and a greater likelihood of negotiating lower salaries when offers are made.
A combined proportion of 86.5% of the advertised jobs is for salaries less than 15 Lakhs.
The 6-10 lakh salary range had the highest proportion of analytics jobs advertised in June 2021 at 31.5%, a marginal increase as compared to August 2020, when it was 30.7%
The proportion of jobs with entry-level salaries decreased from August 2020 to June 2021. This could be attributed to the increase in the proportion of mid-senior and senior-level open jobs in analytics
- 64.3% of the jobs advertised in June 2021 offer a salary less than 10 Lakhs per annum, as opposed to 68.0% in August 2020 and 69.0% in January 2020
- 8.5% of the jobs advertised in June 2021 offer a salary between 0-3 Lakhs per annum, as opposed to 9.6% in August 2020 and 12.4% in January 2020
- 24.3% of the jobs advertised in June 2021 offer a salary between 3-6 Lakhs per annum, as opposed to 27.7% in August 2020 and 26.7% in January 2020.

Analytics Jobs By Company Type

More than four in five analytics jobs advertised in June 2021 were posted by MNC IT & KPO Service Providers. These firms have observed a rising proportion of analytics jobs from 2018 (when they advertised only 23.6% of the analytics jobs). Since then, this proportion has increased to 59.4% in 2019 and 74.6% in January 2020, only to see it drop to 67.8% in August 2020. As of June 2021, MNC IT & KPO Service Providers make up 81.5% of analytics jobs advertised.
Domestic IT & KPO Service providers contributed to only 9.0% of the total analytics jobs advertised in January 2020. This percentage more than doubled by August 2020 to reach 18.9%, only to drop back to 9.0% in June 2021.
Over three years back, Captive Centres in India had one of the highest percentages (40.7% in 2018) of analytics job requirements. However, this percentage fell to 4.1% in June 2021 from 5.8% in August 2020 and 11.0% in January 2020.
The Indian consumer firms contributed to only 1.6% of the analytics jobs in June 2021, the lowest among all company types. These firms advertised 9.1% of the total analytics job postings in 2018, after which this percentage has seen a declining trend. This percentage reduced to 4.0% in 2019 and 1.6% in January 2020.
Consulting Firms’ proportion of analytics job postings increased from 2.5% in August 2020 to reach 3.7% in June 2021, the same as January 2020. The Consulting companies run their analytics operations in India as cost centres – and have reduced hiring as a direct result of the recessionary environment. Hence, these firms have also seen a declining trend in the proportion of analytics job advertised, reducing from 13.3% in 2019 to 3.7% in June 2021.

Conclusion

There are approximately 138,000 jobs open in June 2021, a 67.0% increase from June 2020 when the average of advertised analytics jobs reached the lowest due to the pandemic.

This increase in job numbers can be mainly attributed to the backfilling activity of companies after they laid off many employees due to the lockdown in March 2020. It can also be attributed to the accelerated adoption of AI/data science in India, which is a direct result of the pandemic.