On 14 August, Parigyan hosted its first event in style with a talk by acclaimed contemporary artist Dr. Subodh Kerkar. Addressing students of PGDM (BDA) Batch 2018-20, Dr. Kerkar spoke on the visual arts. As a distinguished artist who has experimented with diverse media, in particular land art and conceptual art, Dr. Subodh Kerkar specializes in creating works using natural materials and plants. He founded Kerkar Art Complex in Calangute, Goa in 1992.

Sharing what Art means to him, Dr. Kerkar enthused members of the audience by displaying pictures of works of art by artists from around the world. Through these images, he introduced the viewers to Modern Art. He spoke about various new and bold art forms like creating visual displays by using oil paints over a large canvas and creating art through fireworks. His presentation also covered other interesting forms of art on objects like buildings.

It was a powerful talk which also touched on the creative aspects of Data Analytics. We create Art to look beyond the mundane and, today, in Analytics it has become much more crucial to convert vast quantities of data to make meanings for diverse audiences. Big Data is often referred to as the gold of the 21st century and employing imagination and creativity will further its research and use. Dr. Kerkar's talk session stood out for its unique and powerful presentation on Art and for bringing in a range of ideas, thoughts, and perspectives.

Mr. Luke Sequeira, Founder of Numadic, a Startup in Goa, briefed up the class regarding the importance of Data Analytics in Present World. He discussed supply Chain Monitoring & Fraud Detection Platform used in the industry nowadays. He compared the different job roles in Data Analytics Sector and also emphasized about the importance of internships in Start-Ups.

Dr. Kingshuk Srivastav is the Advisor and the Chief Product Officer at Credfic Technologies Private Limited and has a specialization in Image Analytics, Text Analytics, and the “big data” revolution. The amount of data being accumulated is doubling every 18 months and data scientists and engineers are looking for attribution and developing algorithms to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

He talked about the identification process of image parameters and the algorithms associated with Image analytics. He also talked about the basics of Machine learning like supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and artificial neural network and design.

In his talk, he showed the relevance of such tools in our day to day activities in our life. These techniques in Image and text analytics are allowing companies to anticipate the end user demand and react accordingly.

Dr. Srivastav is also associated with the IBM Gurukul Programme for various Institutions and has many publications in the areas related to recent trends of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics.

His talk on Image and Text analytics focuses on case histories and success stories where companies have leveraged their data to find new revenue, reduce costs or increase market valuation. He has a demystifying charisma and rendered many practical examples and ideas on analytics which are prevalent today.

Big data analytics is the process of examining large and varied data sets to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences and other useful information that can help organizations make more-informed business decisions. Driven by specialized analytics systems and software, big data analytics can point the way to various business benefits, including new revenue opportunities, more effective marketing, better customer service, improved operational efficiency and competitive advantages over rivals.

Big data analytics applications enable data scientists, predictive modelers, statisticians and other analytics professionals to analyze growing volumes of structured transaction data and other forms of data that are often left untapped by conventional business intelligence (BI) and analytics programs. That encompasses a mix of semi-structured, unstructured and streaming data -- for example, internet clickstream data, web server logs, social media content, text from customer emails and survey responses, mobile-phone call-detail records and machine data captured by sensors connected to the internet of things.

On a broad scale, data analytics technologies and techniques provide a means of analyzing data sets and drawing conclusions about them to help organizations make informed business decisions. BI queries answer basic questions about business operations and performance. Big data analytics is a form of advanced analytics, which involves complex applications with elements such as predictive models, statistical algorithms and what-if analyses powered by high-performance analytics systems.

Figure 2: Schematic Representation of the Confluence

Big Data Analytics (BDA) has created a new paradigm of facts-based or data-driven decision making in the area of management. The world of business has recognized its prowess and many companies have already adopted it in varying degree. But BDA is not confined only to businesses and it holds huge promise to serve governments in policy formulations as well. GIM in its 25th year of operation has decided to make its foray into this area. After careful study of the prevailing market for analytics education in the country, we have observed that most courses are catering to the current business needs for having skilled personnel to handle tools and techniques in vogue today. Therefore, even the B-schools that have embarked upon this BDA bandwagon, have largely taken a technology route. GIM consistent to her mission to nurture leaders for sustainable business, decided to incorporate BDA in its new course without losing the management orientation. The vision for this programme is to prepare future ready managers who are well versed with the prowess of BDA with hands-on experience with handling of tools and techniques in vogue, so as to manage their respective domains most effectively.

The programme is structured to have a 40:60 mix of business knowledge and BDA related experience. The state-of-the-art Data Science Laboratory with cloud service which will enable the students to have hands-on training on actual data sets. Apart from this core knowledge and experience required for future managers, the students shall be facilitated to develop those qualities and to internalise those values which will make them effective leaders in organisations. The programme involves extensive application of case-based learning, use of simulations, seminars, and actual hands-on training, assignments both at individual and group levels, and intensive exposure to the actual business problems through on-site industry projects. The students are encouraged to creatively think about business situations, proactively anticipate issues and problems, and innovatively deal with them such that they are fully prepared to plunge into the business world to make a challenging professional career. The courses are critically designed taking feedback from consultants, teachers and cross-section of leading industries in the area of analytics and to make programme attractive to employers.

The board of studies constituted for this program consists of eminent personalities working in some world-class institutions. They are: 

1. Prof Károly Böröczky, Professor and Head of Department of Mathematics and Its Applications, Central European University.
2. Prof Chandrasekhar Subramanyam, Sr. Professor and Director Business Analytics Centre, IFIM Business School, Bangalore.
3. Mr. Sandeep Mittal, Managing Director, Cartesian Consulting Pvt. Ltd., Singapore & Mumbai.
4. Prof Prithwis Mukherjee, Programme Director, Business Analytics, Praxis Business School, Kolkata.
5. Prof Arnab K Laha, Professor, Production and Quantitative Methods, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
6. Mr. Shailendra Singh, Head, eCommerce, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Mumbai, India.
7. Prof Niloy Ganguly, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Karagpur.
8. Prof Pulak Ghosh, Professor, Quantitative Methods and Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
9. Dr Anshuman Gupta, Director Data Science at Pitney Bowes and Ex-Head of Data Science Program at Cognizant Technology Solutions, Bangalore.
10. Dr. Soumitra Das, Senior Consultant, Analytics Training, SAS Institute, Mumbai.

After completion of three terms in the campus, students are required to immediately join their respective companies to do analytics internships projects for five months. The placement for the internship takes place during the second term. The five-month internship is mentored by one GIM faculty and a company executive.

Placement

The placement of BDA programme students are handled by a selective committee of students who work relentlessly and with utmost dedication. There is a faculty in-charge of the placement who supervises this committee.

The placement committee handles various tasks related to placements such as reaching out to the potential recruiters and inviting them for conducting campus recruitment interviews, talks and seminars etc. These activities are conducted both for final placement and summer internship placements. The students go through a 5-month rigorous internship which is quite a learning and development process. Every year, based on the performance of the students in their internships, some students receive Pre-Placement offer (PPO).

The placement of the BDA programme had been 100% for the last batch. The placement report of previous batch can be accessed on institute's website under the link of Placement.

Career

The analytics sector can offer some of the most exciting career opportunities for management professionals. There is a diverse range of roles that BDA students had taken up. The feedback received from students regarding their jobs and career growth is overwhelming. Below are a few industries where our students are currently placed-

1. Data Analytics
2. Digital Marketing
3. IT Services
4. Consulting Services
5. BFSI
6. Automobile
7. Manufacturing
8. Education Technology
9. FMCG
10. Media & Communication
11. Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

In the last term (Term VI) the students shall be placed in companies to do actual analytics project. The GIM has tied up with some companies and expect to add more to its pool. These companies have adopted Analytics in some parts of their businesses and would accept students to do a project for them. The project has substantial weightage as indicated in the course structure. The evaluation shall be jointly done by the company guide and the faculty.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, business analyst jobs are predicted to increase by 22 percent by 2020. According to a recent McKinsey & Company big data report, by 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals with deep analytical skills, as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to analyse the large chunk of big data to make effective decisions.

Another indication of supply-demand gap is the increasing trend in salaries. In the US analytics salary bands have been consistently rising over the years. The average predictive analytics salary (non-managers) in 2015 was $88.4K with a mean bonus of 11 percent, and for managers is $160K with a 19.1 percent bonus. Data scientist salaries are even higher, with the average (for non-managers) being $120K with a mean bonus of 14.5 percent and for managers $183K with a 19.5 percent bonus.

The same trend is observable even in the Indian job market. India is likely to be the supply hub for this demand. The analytics market in India could more than double from the current $ 1 billion to $ 2.3 billion by the end of 2017-18 according to an Industry Report by NASSCOM. Analytics firms in India will soon face a shortage of 2 lakh data scientist as reported in the leading national daily, The Hindu. According to the Big Data Salary Report 2016 prepared by Jigsaw Academy and Analytics Vidhya the job market across India is seeing a 32.2 percent demand with people having qualification in business analytics over and above degrees in IT or business administration or even doctorates. This is six to eight times more than the demand for IT jobs that is 26.4 percent nationally. According to the analytics school, data analytic graduates are being paid Rs 12.19 Lakhs per annum in Mumbai, followed by Bengaluru, Rs 10.48 lakhs and Delhi—NCR, Rs 10.4 lakhs per annum. Bengaluru offered 30,000 (the highest number) of jobs for analysts and data scientists followed by Delhi, with around 23,000 jobs and Mumbai with around 12,000 jobs. [Big Data & Analytics salary Report 2016]

Data Science Analytics profession has evolved in recent years into many roles which can be considered from Data Scientists to Data-driven Decision Makers with inverse proportion of analytical rigor as shown in the table 1 below:

Table 1: Description of DSA Jobs
Source: https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgibin/ssialias?htmlfid=IML14576USEN&