Rising wave of interest in data science education across India, say experts of Imarticus Learning
MUMBAI : Over the past 25 years, the ascent of the internet has transformed data science into an expanding industry, making it one of the most promising sectors for job growth in India. Today, nearly every major corporation necessitates a dedicated team of data analysts. Data science has become top priority for corporations because decisions and business values derived from it have evolved from being purely transactional to strategic, and analytical maturity from being aspirational to transformational. This has led to a rising wave of interest in data science education across the country, according to experts of Imarticus Learning, India’s leading edtech company which offers courses for professionals in data science and machine learning.
Said Karthik C, VP and Head of Data Science, Imarticus Learning, Mumbai: “BFSI sector is hiring the maximum number of data science professionals in India, followed by ecommerce / Internet and energy / utilities. These three industries account for over 60% of all data science jobs in the country. Other sectors aggressively hiring include retail, pharma and healthcare, media and entertainment, automobiles, and telecom.” The most-in-demand role in data science / analytics is that of a business analyst, followed by data engineer, data scientist, data analyst and deep learning, respectively, according to the 2022 Analytics India report.”
Karthik C added: “The future would increasingly be driven by data, and the opportunity to harness insights from data science is limitless. The increasing presence of multinational corporations in India which are enhancing productivity through tooling, automation, simulation, prediction, and optimization is fuelling job growth in the sector. The essential skills required to excel in data science include programming, statistical analysis, machine learning, and data visualisation.”
According to the Imarticus Learning and Analytics Insights, Data Science Report 2023, the global data science education market is projected to reach US$378 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 16.43% from 2022 to 2030. India’s data science education market is estimated to grow from US$204.23 million in 2023 to US$1.391 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 57.52%.
Data science has evolved exponentially since 2000 due to the rise of the Internet and its widespread adoption. Karthik C said: “The Internet has created the modern field of data science. With its rise quarter of a century ago, a huge amount of data began to be created compared to the pre-Internet era. Second, cloud storage made the storage of this vast quantity of data possible. Third, cheaper computational power enabled large-scale processing of data. This has turned data science / analytics into a sunrise sector for the economy. There is hardly any large-scale company today that doesn’t require a team of data analysts,” he said.
Talking about the evolution of data science since the dawn of the Internet era, Karthik C said: “Data science 25 years ago merely involved storage of data, checking its quality and making transactional decisions. The next step in its evolution was descriptive analytics and business intelligence. In the 2000s, diagnostic analytics was introduced, allowing for identification of factors and causes. This was followed by predictive analytics with capability for forecasting and probabilities. This is when machine learning came into play. Prescriptive analytics was the next step, which helped optimise systems by recommending what needed to be done. The cutting-edge in data science now is semantics which is built around understanding social context and meaning of data.”
Nikhil Barshikar, Founder and CEO, Imarticus Learning said: “The last two years have been completely transformative for data science with the introduction of generative AI. The rapid rise of AI applications has profoundly impacted various industries. Data science and machine learning are no longer looked at to process only quantitative data. These are now being used in text, audio, images, and videos too. The transition now is from numeric data to art, from solving business problems to helping people in day-to- day life. Large number of startups are capitalising on this trend. Data science education industry is keeping pace by embedding newer technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and GenAI in the curriculums.”