Chennai certainly has an ecosystem for multi-service IT companies, which can provide analytics and AI solutions at scale.
In the last couple of years, several analytics firms headquartered outside Chennai have made their way to the city to tap its rich domain capability in sectors like manufacturing, consumer goods, transportation, healthcare and life sciences. And why not? The city has a brand identity with benefits like employment, and crowdsourced investments.
Interestingly, Chennai is certainly now gaining traction as the analytics hub of India. Chennai does have an ecosystem for that. Several multi-service IT companies, which can give access to analytics and AI solutions at scale, a list of higher educational institutions offering data science and analytics programmes, and the government’s support via Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) – it all does give a boost to the city’s development as a analytics hub, be it descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive.
Not to miss, since decades, several IT services companies like TCS, Cognizant, Accenture, Infosys, Capgemini, Wipro, have been providing IT services from the city. In fact, pure-play analytics companies such as LatentView Analytics, Tiger Analytics, Crayon Data and Ganit from the city, have propelled over the years.
In addition, major GCCs of large multinationals such as Ford, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Walmart, among others, have also set up exclusive data analytics hubs in Chennai. For instance, Ford has set up its Ford Data Insight and Analytics Centre in Chennai and the wing boasts of 500 data scientists.
Companies with analytics solutions such as sales and marketing analytics are across the country, but those with industry-specific problems that need data-driven solutions are now headquartered in Chennai. They are now tapping in sectors like financial services, manufacturing, consumer goods, transportation, and others with a focus on fraud and risk analytics, health analytics, supply chain analytics, and so on.
Nonetheless, the state of Tamil Nadu is known to be a top leader, when it comes to higher education rankings in the country, with most of the engineering colleges from the state figuring among the Top 100 or Top 200. Several of these institutions have focused on the state’s STEM foundation and most colleges — across engineering, science and management — today generate over 50,000 graduates every year with specialisation in data science.
Highlighting Tamil Nadu’s long years of investment in STEM education, it can aid the deep analytics capabilities of companies in Chennai and the state. In fact, it is estimated that more than 100,000 data engineers, architects and machine learning engineers are already working with Chennai-based companies. If its foundation is developed well, Chennai can certainly be established as the analytics capital of India, and maybe of the world as well.
