Niche Analytics Companies

An insider view What projects do niche companies work on? A typical day in the life of a data scientist. Insights from the founders and much more

An exclusive report by Jigsaw Academy

A note from the CEO, Jigsaw Academy

It is with great pleasure and excitement that we at Jigsaw academy present our report on niche analytics companies in India. There are many enterprising and successful companies out there who are making great strides in the analytics arena. Their work is inspiring and we at Jigsaw, are proud to be associated with a number of these start-ups who are doing cutting-edge work for businesses around the globe. Often the smaller companies are doing more path-breaking work and oer better career opportunities for those looking to start o in analytics. However analytics aspirants often struggle to nd out about smaller companies. This report is an attempt to make people aware of the type of work niche analytics companies do and the kind of interesting career options they oer. We thank the founders and sta of Gramener and Marketelligent for their time and support in helping us compile this report.

Purpose of this report

With data analytics booming world over, India too has become a major player in the analytics industry. Niche analytics companies are mushrooming in India and are fast attracting some of the best analytics talent there is. With a view to getting a closer look at just how some of these successful companies function we wanted to go in depth and personal with them, hoping that by reading about the exciting and challenging work environment they oer, many of you will be inspired to gain some analytic skills and become a part of the analytics boom.

What are Niche Analytic Companies?

This category comprises of companies (mostly small and mid-size) that focus on providing analytics expertise to businesses around the world. Growth opportunities are abundant in such companies. According to a report by Jigsaw academy, niche analytics companies oer salaries that average at 4.5 lakhs at entry level and go up to 16 lakhs for director level (10+ years of experience). They provide a varied and challenging work environment, with the quality of work done in most of the niche analytics companies being of a very high standard.

Introduction

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Companies in focus
Gramener / Marketelligent

A Data Visualizations & Analytics Company

Gramener transforms data into concise dashboards, so that business problem & solutions are visually obvious. They nd insights quickly, based on cognitive research, and their visualization guide actionable decisions. Gramener founded in 2010 is one of those highly successful niche analytics companies in India that is taking data analytics to a whole new level. Simply put, they take large data sets, analyze them using non traditional analytics and visualize it in real time. Their primary focus of work lies in Data Visualization, Data Analytics, Text Analytics and Predictive Analytics.

Gramener in a nutshell

Founded 2010 Founders J Ramachandran Naveen Gattu Anand S Primary Focus of Work

Examples of projects

Data Visualization, Data Analytics, Text Analytics, Predictive Analytics

Large Telecome Operator

Visualization for Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

No. of Employees 70+ Clients 25+ customers across 8 vertical Among them: Airtel, Axis Bank, TVS, P&G, Suguna Foods Oces in Hyderabad (HQ), Bangalore (R&D) Comibitore (OPs)

Suguna Foods
Production Planning Analytics, Operational Eciencies, Sales & Marketing

Fortune 10 Customer
Clinical Trail Analytics and Visualization

TVS & Sons

Service Analytics and Visualization

Major bank in India

Branch Performance Analysis

Gramener

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About the founders

Gramener was founded by industry veterans J Ramachandran, Naveen Gattu and Anand S who are alumni from IIT, NIT and IIM, some of the top institutions in the country. They are all leaders with a business management track record in high-tech Fortune 50 pedigree companies like IBM, Boston Consulting, Delloitte and Accenture. Guided by innate professional ethics they are mentors and role models for all aspiring data scientists.

J Ramachandran, CEO & Co-Founder

Ram holds a Master's Degree in Technology from IIT Kanpur and is an industry veteran with over 20 years of Technology Services experience. At IBM Global Services USA, Ram led thought and implementations for Fortune 50 customers, in adoption and implementation of technology. Ram was also the CEO of a 200 Million Dollar IT Services Company. He now guides Gramener with the purpose of providing consistent and impacting contributions to the human fraternity through technology led ethical enterprises.

Gramener

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About the founders

Naveen Gattu, COO & Co-Founder
Naveen is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in the Tech consulting and outsourcing arena. He has a Bachelors degree in electronics and telecommunication and has done leadership courses related to Strategic Account Management and Global Management of teams. He was with IBM, North America for a decade and held various strategic roles for Tier 2 Indian IT rms. He has been responsible for delivering a number of complex technology led business transformation programs for Financial Services. He brings this vast experience to Gramener, adding great value to Sales, Alliance Management, Program Management and Global Delivery.

Anand S, Chief Data Scientist & Co-Founder

Anand has advised and designed IT systems for organizations such as the Citigroup, Honda, ICICI, IBM, Oracle, RBS, SAP, Tesco, etc. He has an MBA from IIM Bangalore and a B.Tech from IIT Madras. He has worked at IBM, Lehman Brothers, The Boston Consulting Group and Infosys Consulting. Anand also blogs at s-anand.net ( a really cool site that will inform and educate you as much as it will make you smile).

Gramener

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How it all began?

All the founders of Gramener are rst generation entrepreneurs who began their careers in IBM. They were very successful in their corporate jobs, but always had one thought at the back of their minds, Can't we work for ourselves and have FUN while at it. Deciding to do just this they got together in 2010 and laid the foundation for Gramener. Considering their consulting experience they decided to get into business analytics. They found that there were many people doing great analytics but there was no eective way yet of data consumption. They wanted to create a niche for themselves and hence decided that this is what they would do, make Data Consumption easy and joyful. Thus Gramener was born.

Recent innovation in the company

The Gramener Visualization Server is a revolutionary business intelligence product that transforms large-scale data into visualizations in real-time without human intervention. The end result helps enterprises eectively consume data through visualizations which help align mental models amongst all the stakeholders. The technology is based on a combination of design, statistics and programming. The visuals are based on cognitive research and presented in a visually appealing and actionable way. The analysis identies hidden correlations and predicts trends for the future. The product can connect to heterogeneous data sources. The entire process of visualizations is automated, and requires no manual eort.

The road ahead

While improving their Visualization platform, Gramener is also focusing on building products which can perform analysis automatically and aid analysts to the extent that they can dedicate more time towards eective business analytics.

Advice for future analysts

Business Analytics is now functional driven. Hence the key to success is being able to measure the value you are adding to the business. This must be tangible and whether it is the analytic tools you use or the analytics insights you garner, they must all be driven in that direction. As an analyst you need to have a are for programming. Also remember that today Data Science is a combination of Statistics, Technology & Design and is a team skill rather than an Individual skill.

Gramener

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A note from Naveen Gattu

How do we add value to our clients?
Meaningful consumption of data, i.e the discovery, understanding, correlation and coherent business actions in enterprises has still not risen to a point where all parts of a business act cohesively, based on what the data reveals. Diverse understanding of the same data by various functions, BI projects which are still IT led, lack of skills in the end user community to seek out relevant data at the speed at which business demands, have all led enterprises to be sub-optimal in usage and application of data. The main reason for this is a lack of simple tools to represent data in a manner in which all stakeholders will understand coherently and consistently.

Gramener

Gramener creates visualizations which are not only simple, powerful, appropriate and relevant to data sets, but which are also meaningful to functions and businesses.
The very fact that human cognizance is enabled through simple visualizations helps to have all stakeholders arrive at mental models that are similar and eliminates the complexity in consuming data that is most relevant to them. This aids in acting fast and in unison, led by a common understanding of the data by all.

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How Gramener Hires?

Hiring Process

Online Test

Interviews

Requirements for Ideal Candidate

Good Programming Skills, Flare for statistics and analysis, Team Player

Sources Talents From

Website & Employee referrals, Focus a lot on speaking at various events as that's a good source to nd great talent, Jigsaw Academy

15+
Analytics talent hired by company in 2013

Salary
Industry Standard salary range which varies with experience, skill level & aptitude

2014
Company plans for expansion as they are expanding into North America

Gramener

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An Interview with Kathirmani Sukumar

Data Scientist, Gramener

Getting a story out of my analysis and presenting it using appropriate visuals, so that the customer will be able to consume their data, is what is exciting.

Tell us a little about yourself, your academic background?

I was born and brought up in Chennai. My school life went in chasing the high scores which my sisters achieved in their schooling and that set a standard for me. With the decent score that I was able to achieve in my +2, I joined Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai and pursued my electrical engineering. Looking at my interests, my college Professor Dr.C.Kamala Kannan motivated me to work on few research projects which later helped me a lot in my professional career. When I nished my bachelors I had two oers, one to join as a software engineer in a reputed IT company and another one to work under Dr. Arun K. Tangirala - Associate Professor at IIT Madras in a research project sponsored by Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC). Considering the exposure that I could get and the technologies that I could learn, I joined IIT Madras as project associate and worked there for three years. At IIT Madras I attended courses on 'time series analysis and statistics' which laid the foundation in analytics for me. My research outcome was published in NDT & E, an international journal.

What got you interested in analytics?

The article "For Todays Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics" from The New York Times ( http:// www.nytimes.com / 2009 / 08 / 06 / technology / 06stats.html?_r=0 ) is what basically motivated me to pursue my career as a data scientist. This particular position demanded a blending of programming and statistical background, which very well matched with my skills.

When did you join Gramener?

During the end of my project at IIT Madras, Prof. Tangirala advised me to approach Anand (Founder and Chief Data Scientist at Gramener). Anand interviewed and tested me with a task and nally it was in May 2012 that I joined Gramener as an intern, and began my journey as a Data Scientist.

What is your job profile?

My job prole at Gramener includes transformation of big data to functional data and analysis of data. Analysis typically involves summarizing and classifying the data using techniques like Decision trees, Principal component analysis etc., The analysis is further automated to present meaningful visualizations. Part of the job prole also includes designing of new visualizations which adds a unique dimension to my prole.

Gramener

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What is your potential career path? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
After 5 years I see myself interacting with many CEOs predicting their companys future stock market or pointing out where they should concentrate next.

Take us through a typical day in your life?

Analyzing data: This is typically done during the initial stage of a project. Usually we get sample datasets from the customer and with the help of the concerned domain experts from the customer side; I understand the nature of the data. Then using tools like Python, Gramex (our own visualization product), Excel and R, I analyze the data and derive insights. Analysis usually will be a mix of descriptive statistics, classications, causal analysis. Toughest part of the work is creating a visual which conveys the insights eectively. Interacting with the customer: After analysis and deriving insights, I am often seen at the customer premises, educating the customer about my analysis and usage of our visualizations. This has been the challenging part of my job, because generally the target audience is top level management and I have been successful in convincing them which is usually dicult. Automating: Interesting part in a day is when I spend time automating all my analysis and visuals using our product and deploy it in the client's machine. Being incharge of the journey of raw data to the end product is a fascinating experience

Most exciting thing about your job?

Getting a story out of my analysis and presenting it using appropriate visuals, so that the customer will be able to consume their data, is what is exciting and also a tough job to do. I am not a domain expert, but still I have to understand the business nature in a short period and think from the customer's perspective which is challenging and exciting at the same time. Working with a team lead by Anand and Ganes Kesari (VP Products and delivery) is most satisfying and a great learning experience.

Gramener

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Which kind of projects do you like working on most?

I like to work on media projects where I can take up some public data and tell a story from it. I am also interested in projects where I can analyse the company's product performance from their customer reviews using text analytics. In the future I would like to use my knowledge in machine learning algorithms.

Any advice for others interested in becoming data scientists?

A strong foundation in mathematics and statistics is very essential. My advice would be to work under a mentor on real time projects before diving into the job.

What are your predictions for analytics in India?

The whole world knows that Indians are experts in Mathematics, which is a primary and important skill for any statistician.

Gramener

With 100% condence I can say that India will become a hub for analytics.

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Analytics with Business Sense

Marketelligent believes that the power of Analytics cannot be unlocked unless it is developed with a clear understanding of its business impact. They use analytics to provide analytical insights and intelligent marketing solutions that enable smarter decisions. Marketelligent founded in 2007 has made its mark in the analytics arena as a niche company that helps client's unlock the power of their information. They customize their services depending on the needs of their client's business, oering them a host of services from data integration and standardization to sophisticated analytic models for predictive modeling and forecasting.

Marketelligent in a nutshell

Founded 2007 Founders Roy Cherian Anunay Gupta Primary Focus of Work

Examples of projects

Helping businesses win by making the most of their information No. of Employees 75+ Clients Across US, India, Middle East and South-east Asia including several Fortune 100 companies. Among them United Breweries, Dell, Times of Money Oces in India: Bangalore and New Delhi USA: New Jersey and New York

E Commerce Co. Optimally allocate its digital spends to maximize new subscriber sign-ups

Alcobev Manufacturer Sales reporting and marketing insights

Leading Publisher Helped deepen customer engagement via targeted cross-sell and up-sell

Leading bank Help validate, maintain and update their delinquency scorecards

Marketelligent

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About the founders

Roy Cherian and Anunay Gupta are two respected and highly experienced professionals and innovators, who founded Marketelligent. Graduates of renowned institutions like IIT, IIM and NYU Stern these analytics enthusiasts have brought their combined experience in multinationals across continents and across industries to the analytics arena.

Roy Cherian
Roy has over 22 years of rich experience in marketing, advertising and media in organisations like Nestle, United Breweries, and FCB. He is known for his passion for innovation, some of which have been recognized globally at Nestle. His one point agenda at Marketelligent is to drive business sense into analytics. Roy holds an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a BTech from College of Engineering, Trivandrum.

Anunay Gupta
Anunay has over 18 years of industry experience, with a signicant portion focused on Analytics in Consumer Finance. He was a core member of the Risk Management team of American Express based in New York City, and headed the o-shore Advanced Analytical Solutions for the US Cards portfolio of Citigroup. He drives the technical rigour into all the analytics we do at Marketelligent. Anunay holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, a BTech from IIT Delhi and a PhD from Penn State.

Marketelligent

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How it all began?

Essentially they saw the opportunity to help companies monetize their Technology investments. Over the past 15-20 years, billions have been spent in putting together technical infrastructure to capture and store various types and forms of data. Roy and Anunay felt that the time was ripe to help businesses start leveraging these assets to improve business performance. Also, there was a strong desire to create something tangible from scratch that was of value to customers, associates and society at large..something that every entrepreneur desires of achieving. Though they could have done this in their corporate careers; the satisfaction of doing it on their own was what spurred them to start Marketelligent.

Recent innovation in the company

Marketelligent has built a few cool tools and products that have delighted both themselves and their clients. Some of them have been instrumental in helping open doors to new businesses also. One such tool has been Mosaic, an interactive online dashboard which facilitates strategic decisions through data visualization. It links statistics with graphics, making information accessible in ways a spread sheet never could. It is capable of supplying real-time insights to help business decisionmakers arrive quickly at complex decisions and optimizations.

The road ahead

Marketelligent envisions being in the analytics services area for many years to come. The opportunity is large and given that they are in the infancy of the data revolution, they are seeking to excel in this area. However, they also realize the importance of technology and see themselves building a capability around this in the near future.

Advice for future analysts

Analytics will continue to gain importance over the next 10 years or so; and though the industry is in its nascent stages Marketelligent forsees a great future ahead. Businesses will continue to invest in data assets and data discovery. Analysts should spend at least two years learning the fundamentals of analytics, be very hands-on and understand the business that they are working with.

Marketelligent

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A note from Annunay Gupta

What analytics means to us?
We use analytics essentially to solve business problems. We work with clients across the globe and across functions and industries. From that perspective, we are truly a global rm. We help clients in 3 key areas strategic reporting and visualization, business analysis and predictive analytics. We are today essentially a services/consulting rm. However, we see opportunities in expanding into the technology area; especially given the power of big data and machine learning.

Marketelligent

We use analytics essentially to solve business problems.

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How Marketelligent Hires?

Hiring Process

Interviews
Stringent hiring process; typically only 1 in 50 gets an oer

Requirements for Ideal Candidate

Good grasp of technical fundamentals, Relates to the business problem being solved from a technical perspective, Who can communicate clearly and cut through the haze.

Sources Talents From

Primarily through referrals from current and past associates, Direct applications. Campus placements, Agencies, Jigsaw Academy

30+
Analytics talent hired by company in 2013

Salary
Industry Standard / Depends on person and the value they bring

2014
Company plans for expansion in 2014

Marketelligent

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An Interview with Eliza Matthen

Data analyst, Marketelligent

Analysis is very important for any business today and in the future we will see more companies demanding information in real time.

Tell us a little about yourself, your academic background?

I did my schooling from The Lawrence School, Lovedale, OOTY. For 12th I took Science with Biology. I joined St.Xaviers, Mumbai for BSc. Mathematics being my favorite subject I took a combination of Mathematics, Statistics and Economics. I found statistics interesting and I nally did BSc Statistics with Computer Applications. After nishing my degree in 2012 I joined Marketelligent as an intern for 6 months after which I am continuing as a consultant. I also like playing badminton , listening to music and watching movies etc.

What got you interested in analytics?

An analytic company came to St.Xaviers for placement and spoke about their work which I found very exciting and I thought it is the right platform where I could put to good use my subject knowledge and skills.

When did you join Marketelligent, and what is your job profile?
I joined in June, 2012. I am a Business Analyst and I handle the data download, processing/cleaning, I analyze the data and come up with actionable insights. The data is then represented in a dashboard format. I also interact with clients.

What is your potential career path? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
I would like to gain few years experience and then do my Masters in Business Analytics. I hope to make a career in this eld and excel in what I do 5 years from now .

Marketelligent

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Take us through a typical day in your life.

On a normal day I come to oce around 10am, I download the required data and process the data in the required format for which I use SAS or SQL. Then I create reports using Xcelsius or PowerPoint to make it visually appealing and also provide insights/summary on the reports. This normally ends around 6.30 pm. It all really depends on our client needs. Some days it might go on a little longer as we have calls with our US based clients. We also have team meeting on some days where each team gives updates about their projects. There are also training/knowledge transfer that happens simultaneously with our usual work.

Most exciting thing about your job.

I am exposed to a lot of modelling techniques, variety of analytical tools, and the most exciting thing is to be able to implement all that into my work.

Which kind of projects do you like working on most?

I like being part of projects that involve forecasting / predicting and also working on-site.

Any advice for others interested in becoming data scientists?

Having basic knowledge about SAS, SQL and Excel would help you a lot to catch up in the eld. Do expect yourself to stretch more than the usual working hours as you might be working with overseas clients.

What are your predictions for analytics in India?

Analysis is very important in for any business today and in the future we will see more companies demanding information in real time. This will give them an edge and help in improving, monitoring and conducting their business, as well as identifying further opportunities.

Marketelligent

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About Jigsaw Academy

Jigsaw academy is the brainchild of Gaurav Vohra and Sarita Digumarti who together have over 20 years of experience in the analytics industry. Realizing the great potential of analytics and the boom that is still in a nascent stage, they founded Jigsaw Academy with the aim of playing a crucial role in the identifying and nurturing of analytic talent in India and abroad. Jigsaw Academy provides training to professionals and students on the latest tools and techniques in the eld of analytics. Their unique online platform provides the best learning experience through a combination of virtual classroom and labs. The trainers are industry experts who have applied analytics to solve a variety of business problems in diverse domains and who bring a wealth of practical experience into the classroom. Students can opt for live (virtual) classroom training or self-paced video based courses.

www.jigsawacademy.com www.analyticstraining.com www.jigsawacademy.com/faqs info@jigsawacademy.com +91 98805 44099, 90080 17000

About Jigsaw Academy

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Niche Analytic Companies in India

We have compiled the following list of niche analytics companies in India based on internet research and interviews with industry professionals. If we have missed any, please do let us know, so we can update the list in future.

AbsolutData (consumer behaviour analytics) www.absolutdata.com Activecubes (sales, marketing, supply chain, operations) www.activecubes.com/analytics.php Aegis Global (general focuses on broad areas) www.aegisglobal.com/section_level3.aspx?cont_id=eLxpcOMCwVY= Ane Analytics (marketing analytics) www.aneanalytics.com Bridge i2i Analytics (behavioural modeling & resource planning) www.bridgei2i.com Capillary Technologies (retail analytics) www.capillarytech.com Cross Tab Analyticshttp (survey analytics, data mining, big data) - www.cross-tab.com/analytics.php Cytel (clinical & pharma Analytics) www.cytel.co.in/index.shtml Data Monitor (general serves broad areas) www.datamonitor.com Datamatics (nancial, insurance) www.datamatics.com/services/information-management/businessintelligence-analytics Decidyn(marketing, risk and fraud analytics) - www.decidyn.com/marketing_analytics.php DecisionCraft(revenue management) - www.decisioncraft.com/data_analtytics.htm Denuosource (big data management, advanced analytics) - www.denuosource.com Dexterity (CMI, CRM analytics) - www.dexterity.in/Marketing_&_Customer_Intelligence/Analytics.htm Dunhumby (retail analytics) www.dunnhumby.com/in EVALUESERVE (nancial, life sciences analytics) www.evalueserve.com EXL Services (acquired Inductis) (general focuses on broad areas) www.exlservice.com Fractal Analytics (customer loyalty, operations) www.fractalanalytics.com Gramener (visualization, data analysis) - www.gramener.com Global Analytics (credit risk, nancial, lending) - www.global-analytics.com Hansa Cequity (data management, customer analytics - www.hansacequity.com ICRA Technology Services (general serves broad areas) www.icteas.com/business_analytics.php iCreate (banking analytics) www.icreate.in Indix (product intelligence) - www.indix.com Inductis (operations, risk, marketing analytics) - www.exlservice.com/analytics.html inTouch analytics (customer, talent analytics) - www.be-in-touch.com Ipsos (marketing analytics) www.ipsosasiapacic.com Kiesquare Analytics (marketing, customer, risk analytics) - www.kiesquare.com Latentview Analytics (marketing, risk analytics) - www.latentview.com Manhattan Systems (retail analytics) - www.manthansystems.com

Annexure - List of analytic companies in India

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Niche Analytic Companies in India

Marketelligent (CPG, Finance, Telecom Analytics) www.marketelligent.com/home Meritus (marketing, customer analytics) www.meritusglobal.com Modelytics (nancial, lending, collections, recovery, retail banking) www.modelytics.com/integrated/index.htm Mu-Sigma (BFSI, retail, healthcare) - www.mu-sigma.com Nabler (online retail analytics) www.nabler.com NettPositive Analytics (marketing, credit risk analytics) www.nettpositive.com Neural Techsoft (nancial & risk analytics) www.neuraltechsoft.com Opera Solutions (general serves broad areas) www.operasolutions.com SilverPush (advertising and mobile analytics) - www.silvrpush.com SmartAnalyst (life science, healthcare analytics) - www.smartanalyst.com TNS Global (marketing analytics) - www.tnsglobal.com Transunion (nancial, healthcare analytics) - www.transunion.com/corporate/business/business.page Vehere Interactive (telecom, nancial) www.vehereinteractive.com White Capers (risk and fraud) - www.whitecapers.com WNS Analytics (acquired Marketics) (marketing, consumer behaviour analytics) www.wns.com/Services/Cross-Industry-Solutions/Research-and-Analytics.aspx GMID Associates (nance, risk, marketing) - www.thegmid.com Market Equations (Finance, marketing) - www.marketequations.com

Annexure - List of analytic companies in India

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