With a vision of making India a technology-centric economy of the future, various government projects now extensively cover concepts of E-Governance, Smart Cities, and Digitalization. The burgeoning population of our country coupled with diversity is increasing the amount of data generated on an individual level, making India an ideal place to implement big data-related technologies. The Internet ruled the roost for about two decades and now big data has emerged as the largest game-changing opportunity in the global market.

With a compound annual growth rate of 18%, it is estimated that the global big data market will grow up to US$66.79 billion by 2021. According to the National Association of Software & Services (NASSCOM), India's big data market is expected to reach US$16 billion from the present US$2 billion figure by 2025. Mr. K.S. Viswanathan, Vice President at NASSCOM predicts that with a CAGR of 26%, within the next five years India will own a major chunk of around 32% of the global market. The Cloud business is also seeing a rapid adoption in the country where the market is set to hit US$15 billion by 2020. NASSCOM predicts that India will soon make a place in the world's top three big data market from the present top ten stand.

Employing around 90,000 people across industries such as finance, banking, telecom, public health and FMCG, the big data industry has witnessed a significant growth owing to the increase in demand for cloud-based solutions and predictive analytics capabilities. The Indian market will soon catch up with the North America as a leader in high-end data solutions.

Both Government and private agencies are employing big data analytics to connect the length and breadth of the country digitally, giving rise to phenomenal data consumption. We have initiatives like the 'National Optical Fiber Network' that aims to provide high-speed internet connectivity by connecting villages with optical fiber. Then, there is also government's identification project – AADHAR which assigns a unique digital identity to each citizen to avail services like healthcare, finance efficiently. Such projects are expected to generate a huge database of information which can be put to use for further analysis.

The Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India, India's biggest auditor, put to use effectively the massive datasets found in the state and union governments. It has drafted a 'Big Data Management Policy' for the same purpose. Also, we have sensors installed at the last mile of power consumption from which data is captured by DISCOMs (distributed companies) in India. This data is then analyzed with respect to historical patterns in power usage and then preventive measures are developed thereon for AT&C (Aggregated Technical & Power) related losses.

In a population of more than a billion, there are nearly 400 million Internet users generating data each second. Internet-enabled devices lead to an exponential growth in data generation given its accessibility and ease of use. One of the most recent and the largest entrant in this field is Reliance Jio. It entered as a low-cost telecom carrier creating a 4G data wave which enabled even the lower income segment of the population to hop on the digital bandwagon. A better understanding of customers is now gained with all sorts of data being captured. This allows government and businesses alike to improve their strategies and provide differentiated services.

Big data has become the primary means to obtain insights for almost all businesses as well as the governments. We are in a phase where things are changing very fast. Technologies like AI and deep learning algorithms are all set to drive the big data industry further. The 37% percent growth estimated to happen in the global market by 2020 will solely be as a result of affordable big data services and solutions and their penetration in diverse sectors as well as their availability to end users. Being amongst the top 5 mobile consumers of the world, India's vast data generation is indispensable and therein lies the next phase of growth for the big data industry in India.