The title has been around for less than a decade, but already ‘data scientist’ is considered to be among the sexiest jobs of the 21st century. In India it is no different.
Data scientists — the term was coined in 2008 by DJ Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher — are a rare species being chased by startups and big technology companies alike for their ability to make sense of large and complex set of information.
As a result, their salaries have shot through the roof and poaching is rampant. Take the case of S Anand, the chief data scientist at Hyderabad-based data visualisation and analytics company Gramener, for instance. He was recently wooed by an ecommerce major with an offer that was hard to refuse.
Luckily for his cofounder Naveen Gaddu, he was too passionate about their 50-people startup to leave. “At least one-two of my people get pinged on Linkedin every day on an average. Thankfully, they choose to stay,” said Gaddu, the chief operating officer at Gramener.
The sudden prominence for data scientists highlight how startups and established players now need to comb huge volumes of data for information that is key to the success of an idea or business.
Salaries for chief data scientists with over 10 years of experience in mathematics and statistics are regularly touching the Rs 1 crore mark.
