: In an effort to meet the growing requirement of professionals, three of the country’s premier educational institutes are jointly launching a two-year programme in Business Analytics (BA), a method of explaining data using statistical and operations analysis.
The programme, Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics (PGDBA), will be jointly hosted by three top Bengal-based institutions — Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
The four-semester course will be formally launched in a few weeks, director of IIM-Calcutta, Professor Sailbal Chattopadhyay told The Hindu . While IIM-Calcutta and IIT-Madras had co-hosted a programme on manufacturing, this is the first time three leading institutes have come together to produce analytics experts for the industry.
The experts believe that the future of production driven market depends largely on data produced at an exponential rate.
Leading market intelligence firm, International Data Corp (IDC), estimates data production to increase 40 Zettabytes (40 billion Terrabytes) by 2020, a 50 times increase since 2010.
According to an IIM report, the data could “generate hitherto unknown insights” enabling better business decisions.
“But imagine a situation when a sea of data is generating from various platforms — including thesocial media — in any sector. How would you process that with limited resources?” asks professor Chattopadhyay and says: “About 100 BA companies are working out of India, of which half are multinationals and they are doing it on an ad hoc basis. As in, they recruit a management fresher and retrain to fit the (company’s) needs. But we will produce round-peg-for-round-hole BA experts which is why I am expecting more support from the industry,” says Prof. Chattopadhyay.
