What would your opinion on the analytics sector in India and how it is doing currently be?

Analytics and business intelligence is one of the key focus areas for organisations that are constantly exploring how data analytics can be leveraged to stay ahead of competition. India is considered a global hub for analytics outsourcing. Organisations around the world are either setting up their analytics centre of excellence in India or partnering with firms to service their analytics needs. This is primarily due to the availability of high skilled analytics resources and India's proven outsourcing model in other service areas. Sectors such as telecom, retail, healthcare and finance are investing heavily in analytics to stay ahead of competition.

Over the years, adoption of analytics and business intelligence and the market in India will grow at a rapid pace catering to both domestic and international markets. 

What are the major factors contributing to the growth of the industry in India?

Multiple factors such as availability, scale, flexibility and cost drive the growth of this segment in India. As organisations look to increase their focus in analytics, they are exploring alternate models for building analytics capability either through consulting partners or offshore captives in India. India is primarily looked upon as an analytics-outsourcing destination primarily due to the abundance of resources with analytics skills.

How would you describe the current employment/hiring trends in your industry?

The spurt in analytics business in India is creating a lot of demand for analytics professionals who can analyse and build mathematical/statistical models. Creating a pool of trained resources having an educational background of statistics, applied math and operations research can fulfill this demand. People with the requisite academic background can look forward to making data analytics as a career.

What are the career opportunities available in the industry?

There are positions for data analyst, business analyst, mathematical modelling, project management and client engagement. You will require a mix of these roles to successfully deliver a project. 

There is plenty of opportunity for people who have degree in statistics/applied math or business administration, they can be easily trained on analytics platforms such as SAS (Statistical Analysis System) or SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and deployed on projects. The resources can be later groomed into client facing or delivery based roles based on the competency demonstrated.

What are the skills and qualifications required to get into this sector?

A good understanding of the customers' business and ability to analyse large data and implement mathematical/statistical techniques using tools such as SAS and SPSS are skills that are imperative. The business analyst role can be performed by people with a degree in business administration and people with statistics or applied math degrees can be trained on the different tools for the role of data analysts.

--Priya C Nair