Data science and machines learning are hot topics of the season, but as more and more companies are trying to tap these new technologies, the dearth of talent has also become apparent. A recent report by knowledge portal Analytics Vidhya and ed-tech platform Great Learnings, reveals that more than 50,000 positions related to data and analytics are currently vacant in India.
"If we look at the number of job postings for the position of a Data Scientist, the job postings as well as the job seekers' interest show an all-time high in 2017. However, the jobseekers are almost half as much as the number of postings. This clearly indicates how the industry needs more data scientists and that we haven't really acquired the right skills to bag these available opportunities," the report says.
The report adds that currently India contributes 12 per cent to such jobs when compared to the world. However, the number of such jobs is likely to have an exponential growth owing to the dearth of skills worldwide and the underlying demand.
According to the report, the sectors with biggest markets for analytics and data science professionals are banking and financial Services, e-commerce, healthcare and media.
The report says that banking and financial services is the biggest market for analytics and data science professionals and 44 per cent of all jobs were created in this domain in 2017, while e-commerce created 12 per cent jobs.
The report also says that around 39,000 analytics jobs will be created in India by 2020. As per the report, cyber security will create 5000 jobs in data and analytics by 2020, healthcare 15,000, genomic 2000 and space exploration 350. Besides these, sectors such as agriculture, aviation etc. too would need people in data analytics. Agriculture, according to the report, would create 5500 jobs in the space by 2020, aviation 4500, and driverless transportation 7000.