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We thank the founders and staff of Gramener and Marketelligent for their time and support in
helping us compile 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 offer, many of
you will be inspired to gain some analytic skills and become a part of the analytics boom.
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 offer 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.
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.
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.
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
firms. 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 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).
All the founders of Gramener are first 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 effective 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.
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 effectively 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
identifies 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 effort.
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 effective business analytics.
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 flare 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 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.
Hiring Process
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 finished my bachelors I had two offers, 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.
The article "For Today’s 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.
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 finally it was in May 2012 that I joined Gramener as an intern, and
began my journey as a Data Scientist.
My job profile 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 profile also
includes designing of new visualizations which adds a unique dimension to my
profile.
After 5 years I see myself interacting with many CEOs predicting their company’s
future stock market or pointing out where they should concentrate next.
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,
classifications, causal analysis. Toughest part of the work is creating a visual which
conveys the insights effectively.
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 difficult.
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.
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.
The whole world knows that Indians are experts in Mathematics, which is a primary
and important skill for any statistician.
“
With 100% confidence I can say that India will
become a hub for analytics.
Alcobev Manufacturer
Clients
Sales reporting and marketing insights
Across US, India, Middle East and
South-east Asia including several
Leading Publisher
Helped deepen customer engagement via Fortune 100 companies. Among them
targeted cross-sell and up-sell United Breweries, Dell, Times of Money
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 significant 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 off-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.
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.
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 decision-
makers arrive quickly at complex decisions and optimizations.
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.
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.
“
We use analytics essentially to solve business
problems.
Hiring Process
Interviews
Stringent hiring process; typically only 1 in 50 gets an offer
“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 finally did BSc Statistics with
Computer Applications. After finishing 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.
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?
On a normal day I come to office 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.
I like being part of projects that involve forecasting / predicting and also
working on-site.
Having basic knowledge about SAS, SQL and Excel would help you a lot to
catch up in the field. Do expect yourself to stretch more than the usual
working hours as you might be working with overseas clients.
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.
“
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.
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
About Jigsaw Academy Niche Analytics Companies A report by Jigsaw Academy | pg21
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.
Annexure - List of analytic companies in India Niche Analytics Companies A report by Jigsaw Academy | pg22
Niche Analytic Companies in India
Annexure - List of analytic companies in India Niche Analytics Companies A report by Jigsaw Academy | pg23