Data Science is Emerging as a new field of analyzing large datasets and deriving value from that to deliver business competence.

The field of Data Science today has evolved much more and become the most demanded domain across industries. This field of study involves scientific methods, algorithms, processes, and systems to pull out meaningful insights from both structured and unstructured data for effective decision making and predictions. As a multi-disciplinary domain, data science has enabled businesses across the world to assess market trends, analyze users' metrics, envisage potential business risks and make better decisions.

In India, businesses are quickly capitalizing on this newly emerging field to garner more from their data and deliver more value to customers, leading to a rise in demand of data scientists. According to a Great Learning report, the country is expected to see 1.5 lakh new openings in Data Science in 2020, an increase of nearly 62% compared to the last year.

As the competitive business landscape is evolving than ever, understanding the users and their preferences accurately has become critical for companies. This is where the role of data science comes into the scenario, making it possible to create and leverage time-saving automated models to get insights into a user's purchase history, age, income level, and related demographics.

Since the data science field is rising at an unprecedented rate, the huge demand for data science talent with less than five years of work experience is most among BFSI (38%), followed by Energy (13%), Pharma and Healthcare (12%), and E-Commerce (11%), among others. BFSI is the highest average salary offered industry to a Data Scientist stood at INR 13.56 LPA, which is followed by manufacturing and healthcare (INR 11.8 LPA each), and IT (INR 10.06 LPA), the report noted.

Meanwhile, as companies across almost every industry are looking to acquire skilled and qualified talent who can navigate through everyday issues with innovative and right solutions, the supply of skilled professionals is far lesser than the demand. According to our estimations, there are major skills gaps in the field of big data professionals (58%) in 2020 at a global level.

In order to close these gaps, academia, governments as well as organizations must carry out innovative ways to support future minds and derive value from that to spur economic growth. There is a need to implement re-skilling and up-skilling initiatives for data scientists at both corporate and academic levels. The data science professionals will also be expected to have specialized skills in data across all industries, making up-skilling a mandatory job.

While the Great Learning report identified four unique career paths in the data science field including Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Data Engineer and Business Intelligence Developer, the need for rapid up-skilling and adequate guidance has become indispensable. Moreover, investing in data-driven decisions and technology can also add value to businesses, easing the specialized talent shortage and enabling companies to drive efficiency.