Data Analytics is a Hot Career Destination for India’s Youth

Data drives the world of business today. Be it healthcare, BFSI, public sector, manufacturing, media & entertainment, sports, fashion, retail – name any industry and data is proving to be an invaluable asset in solving the most complex problems those businesses might be facing. That is typically what business data analytics does for organizations. 

Business data analytics leverages the best of technologies, statistical tools, and scientific methods to draw logical inferences from raw data. A business data analyst then employs various tools of business intelligence and puts these inferences to good use by helping organizations make strategic decisions to resolve complex situations for business. 

Data analytics is definitely seeing an upward market trajectory in the global context. It’s clearly no passing fad either. From an India standpoint, research findings in 2021 indicate that data analytics adoption among the largest firms in the country was at 74.5% with private sector banks and e-commerce sectors leading with 100% adoption. 

This is a healthy rate of adoption and represents even the traditional sectors like steel, energy, and power. The future for India’s data analytics market continues to be promising as more organizations across sectors in India are realizing how it can play a vital role in helping them scale sustainably. 

What makes business data analytics one of te hottest career destinations today?

Today, thanks to digitalization and emerging technologies, almost every organization within every sector of industry is generating vast amounts of data. But having piles of dormant data is pointless. Business needs to be able to use it in a meaningful and relevant manner too. 

Those at a mature stage of adoption are also able to store all their data securely so that it can be actively shared and converted into meaningful insights by different functions of an organization. 

Each specific function draws its own, relevant inferences and patterns from data to continuously improve operations, automate where necessary, and enhance the overall services they provide. 

This streamlining and operational efficiency empowers the business to focus on using data liberally to understand market trends, customer preferences, competitors, government regulations etc. and build informed strategies. 

All this is possible thanks to data analytics which puts to work smart technologies and computational methods to churn raw inputs into reliable insights for business. To understand how this actually works, let us take the example of a private sector bank with high analytics adoption and see how their team of business intelligence analysts convert raw data to business intelligence.

Example of a business intelligence analyst at work in a bank:

Here, data analysts utilize the bank’s data to inform every crucial function across the value chain. This includes drawing insights from data for:

• Identifying an individual customer’s banking preferences and patterns
• Creating segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns
• Acquiring new customers and retaining them
• Personalizing the customer’s banking interactions  
• Using credit score analyses to enhance security and detect potential fraudulent transactions
• Planning business growth strategy to stay market relevant

What makes it a smart career choice for young professionals?

The data analytics industry in India is poised to grow to US$ 118.7 billion by 2026 with at least 11 million job opportunities expected to spring up. There are several market trends that substantiate this promising outlook. 

For starters, it’s not just the IT industry, but almost every non-IT sector in India that has woken up to the fact that data is the new currency. Even traditional sectors like Oil & Gas are witnessing an increase in hiring of professionals with skills required for data analysts. 

Organizations in these sectors have realized how technologies like AI and automation can drastically reduce risks to human life as well as manual errors. However, these businesses are not likely to possess the required skills for sophisticated business analytics in-house. As a result, the demand for competent business data analysts is bound to go up, if not so already. 

Similarly, from the public sector too, several government departments are joining hands with technology companies and start-ups to see how to set up digital platforms and use big data analytics to improve citizen services. This will further open up the job market for young professionals like you. 

So how do you become a data analyst?

The fundamental ask is that you have a keen interest if not a solid grounding in mathematics and basic statistics. The best part is that you don’t need a computer science engineering background. 

You could be a mechanical engineer or have a degree in computer applications or commerce and still get started on your career in data analytics. Training in R programming, Adobe Spark, SaaS are some of the skills you might consider acquiring when you’re setting out on a career in data analysis. 

Regardless of your educational background, certain skills will be instrumental in shaping your career in data analytics as you aim to bring the power of business intelligence to maximize profitability of the business. The key skills required for data analysts on the job are:

• Critical and analytical thinking 
• Business objective understanding 
• Interpersonal and communication skills/ telecommunications
• Programming, SQL, and database
• Product management
• Decision making 
• Negotiation skills 
• Machine Learning
• Documentation 
• Microsoft Excel

The graph below illustrates how analytics professionals are distributed in the market based on their academic background. 

Source: Analytics India Mag

Once you embark on your data analysis career, a variety of job profiles become available based on your skillsets and personal inclinations. 

For example, if you see yourself as a number cruncher, you could aim for the profile of data scientist, which is one of the highly coveted jobs in the market today, according to research by career platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor.

Or you might want to exercise your analytical side and explore roles that involve quantitative analysis or statistical modelling. Or you could align yourself to a business analyst’s role purely working with data or as a manager/consultant with business analytics training. 

What kind of pay packages should you expect? 

The annual basic salary at the entry level is in the 6-7 lakh range and can go up to an INR 50-lakh package in less than five years. 

The list below will give you an idea of the base average pay you can expect according to the role and skills. These figures will vary by location and experience levels. 

• Business Analysis – Rs 6,31,572
• Requirements Analysis – Rs 6,59,932
• SQL – Rs 6,47,341
• Microsoft Excel Expert – Rs 5,57,736
• Project Management – Rs 5,93,715

The salary packages based on location are as follows:

• Bengaluru – Rs 7,38,092
• New Delhi – Rs 6,08,820
• Pune – Rs 7,52,994
• Mumbai – Rs 6,19,360
• Hyderabad – Rs 6,38,815 
• Kolkata – Rs 6,81,163

The salary breakup based on your experience is:

• Entry Level Business Analyst – Rs 3,69,525
• Early-Career Business Analyst – Rs 5,13,065
• Mid-Career Business Analyst – Rs 8,56,871
• Late-Career Business Analyst – Rs 12,89,367
• Experienced Business Analyst – Rs 19,65,270

How to grow and nurture your career in the data domain 

While a high proportion of jobs in India’s domestic market are currently entry-level, you could start off as a data analyst and progress steadily to business analyst or data engineer or data scientist. This career progression will depend on how well you acquire the right data analytics training and relevant skills for each role within the data analysis spectrum.

An Analytics India Mag study found that approximately 1,400 data science professionals working in India command a salary of at least Rs 1 Crore (USD 1,26,198). In post-pandemic times, the demand for analytics is expected to increase and in turn, raise the salary of analytics professionals even higher. 

Even as the industry is projecting exponential growth, India is already facing a demand-to-supply gap of the right talent. This skills shortage needs to be fulfilled quickly if organizations and government bodies have to persist with their growth agenda built on business intelligence supplied by data. 

For aspiring professionals like you, pursuing the data career line sets up a terrific opportunity to skill yourself and fulfill your own goals of an impressive pay package and exciting professional journey.

Getting a data analytics certification will set you off in the right direction. Hero Vired offers data analytics training through a host of business analytics courses. For example, you could take up our Accelerator Program in Business Analytics and Data Science and gain a fundamental understanding of data science and business analytics. 

Or you could acquire a MicroMaster’s certification from edX and Georgia Tech by completing our PG Certificate Program in Business Analytics and Data Science. Here’s a snapshot of how you can benefit through this deep-dive program for data analytics certification.

• Acquire the skills to make data-driven business decisions. 
• Master the art of gleaning insights from data and conveying it to key stakeholders for decision-making. 
• Become a certified and highly sought-after Business Analytics professional during these exciting times of transformation in India