The Harvard Business Review claims it as one of the most sought-after jobs of the 21st century; and yes the term itself beholds quite vim and vigor, as the demand for Data Scientists is increasing with each passing day. The Data Scientist title has been around for less than a decade and the term was coined in 2008 by Dr. DJ Patil, Chief Data Scientist White house of Science and Technology Policy and Jeff Hammerbacher, Chief-Scientist, Cloudera. They described it as 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.

The Data Scientists are no less than big guns as their sudden prominence portrays that even the bigwig’s and start-ups now need to comb huge volumes of data for information that is critical for the success of an idea or business. The e-Commerce companies who are quite ubiquitous in India have also realized their worth. Here are five reasons why Data Scientists are in demand:

1. Multination Companies Pouring Billions of Dollar

The availability of very large data sets is one of the reasons Deep Learning, a sub-set of artificial intelligence (AI), has recently emerged as the hottest tech trend, with Google, Facebook, Baidu, Amazon, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft, all with very deep pockets, investing in acquiring talent and releasing open AI hardware and software. To meet growing client demands in today’s data intensive industries, IBM has established the world’s deepest and broadest portfolio of Big Data and Analytics technologies and solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware. Fueling this is the fact that IBM has made a multi-billion dollar investment in big data and analytics — $24 billion since 2005 through both acquisitions and R&D — to extend its leadership position in this strategic market. HP and GE on other hand each invested over $1 billon in big data. China invested over $20 billion in AI. The big data analytics market will surpass $200 billion by 2010 as per the IDC. So if you have any doubt if Big Data is only a buzz word think twice!

2. Demand Supply Gap

From tech startups to Fortune 500 companies, data scientists are a hot commodity. A McKinsey study predicts that by 2017 the U.S. could face a shortage of almost 200,000 people with ‘deep analytical

skills’. No surprise, then, that they boast an eye-popping average starting salary of around $120,000. People with the necessary skills are scarce, primarily because the discipline is so new.

The availability of very large data sets is one of the reasons Deep Learning, a sub-set of artificial intelligence (AI), has recently emerged as the hottest tech trend

The growth of Data Science, Big Data, Analytics, AI, ML, Deep learning is huge in India in almost every industry: Telecom, IT, Insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, banking, retail, media, consulting, ecommerce, oil & gas, automobile, airline, Govt, NGOs and start-ups. Data Science and AI is playing a major role in Cyber Security as most of the cyber-attacks are automated which needs automated defence systems with deep cognitive and AI capability. The demand for data scientists with depth of knowledge and applied skills in various areas like math, stats, AI coding, domain, AI, ML, Deep Learning, NLP, Big Data etc is growing at rapid pace however India academia and industry is not able to full fill the need.

As India has the largest pool of people with math and coding skills, we can become world’s largest hub for skills for Data Science, ML, AI and Deep learning. To accomplice this mission IBM and Aegis School of Business, Data Science, Cyber Security & Telecommunication has launched the most comprehensive Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Data Science, Business Analytics and Big Data and Cyber Security programs which covers all the aspect.

3. Its Money Raining - The Hunt for Unicorn Data Scientists are in the making!

Mobile commerce player Paytm is hiring a team of eight data scientists in Canada, paying on an average $250,000 (Rs 1.5 crore) each. At least four senior industry professionals said Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Walmart were among the companies waving fat pay packets to top data scientists. Salaries for Chief Data Scientists with over 10 years of experience in mathematics and statistics are regularly touching the Rs.1 crore mark; as mentioned in Economics Times. Unicorn Data Scientist are the upgraded version of our racy data scientists, but are a little hard to hunt and are compensated more than $200,000 per year.

4. Data Scientists are Supermen with Crystal Ball

Data Scientists are super men who tell stories out of the data, respective of the size of data: big or small. They answer questions like what's happening. What will happen? What we should do now? These are termed as BI, Predictive analytics and Prescriptive Analytics. They use statistics, Machine learning, AI, Deep Learning, NLP, R, Python, Hadoop, Spark to create Crystal Ball to predict future, solve business problem or find out the missing opportunities. Snapdeal, which has over 20 million subscribers and generates terabytes of data through the interactions that happen with customers in addition to a catalogue of over 5 million, churns 15 million data points (related data set like a consumer shopping on specific days for a particular thing) within two hours, using Hadoop. About 35% of its orders come from recommendation and personalized systems, and the conversion rate of such orders is 20-30% higher than normal orders, the company claims.

5. With Data Science, you can finally be a Rock Star!

If you weren’t homecoming royalty in college, it’s time to wipe away your tears. From Google to Twitter, and IBM to Snapdeal, the hottest tech and e-Commerce companies are clamouring for data scientists.