India set for big data boom

NEW DELHI: Companies in India stand to gain $1bn in revenue from the rising demand for big data services and analytics by 2015, a study has suggested.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the trade body, and CRISIL, the research group, valued this market at $200m in India, a figure which should hit $1bn by 2015.

Roopa Kudva, the chief executive of CRISIL, argued that this expansion will be fuelled by major corporations seeking to leverage the burgeoning amount of information available on the web.

"The opportunity for Indian service providers lies in offering services around big data implementation and analytics for global multinationals," he said.

Among the core industries likely to register the greatest uptake are retail, financial services, telecoms, healthcare and manufacturing.

Currently, IT services firms take 82.9% of revenues, and are set to retain the leading position on this metric. Analytics companies, in second place in terms of market share, now generate 17.1% of sales.

Alongside a need to develop the technology, the study asserted that competition for talented data scientists will become increasingly intense, and may actually constitute "the biggest challenge for the industry".

The report predicted the US would see a shortage of 190,000 such workers by 2018, suggesting there is a strong outsourcing opportunity in India, where 15,000 to 20,000 specialist jobs will be created by 2015.

At the global level, the big data category should be worth $25bn by 2015, compared with $5.3bn in 2011, recording a compound annual growth rate of 45%.

Som Mittal, the president of NASSCOM, stated that 90% of firms featured in the Fortune 500, which lists the largest US corporations by revenue, are expected to have big data schemes in place by the end of 2012.

"Currently, North America and Europe account for a substantial portion of the global demand potential for big data analytics," he added. "Already, new big data companies are attracting funding in excess of $50m."

Data sourced from CRISIL; additional content by Warc staff, 7 September 2012

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