At a time when analytics is becoming more pervasive helping businesses across various sectors, India is expected to maintain its edge over major offshore destinations who present analytics services outsourcing.

According to a recent report by a financial services firm Avendus Capital, India will continue to establish its leadership position in analytics services over other competing countries or regions such as China, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The demand for this service from India will be driven by a host of factors such as availability of talent pool, maturity of the industry and wide spectrum of services.

Data analytics is the science of using raw data by extensive use of statistical and quantitative analysis for the purpose of drawing business related conclusions and for predicting business outcomes.

Among the industries, banking and financial which is one of the earliest adopters of knowledge services is the largest user of the analytics services followed by retail, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

According the report, by 2015, the data analytics market in India is expected to reach 1.15 million U.S. dollars to become 21 percent of the overall Indian KPO market opportunities of 5.6 billion U.S. dollars. "Although this market has been around since early 2000's, the exponential growth in data generation, significant decrease in data storage cost and increase need of companies to make decisions based on actionable insights, have increased the demand for data analytics services," said Amit Singh, executive director in charge of technology and outsourcing of the Avendus Capital.

He said the U.S. which is the biggest market for data analytics outsourcing is estimated to have a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals with analytical capabilities by 2018. "This talent supply gap is expected to boost demand for analytics outsourcing services what the Indian service providers could leverage on," he added.

The service providers' landscape in India is split between pure-play analytics vendors, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services providers and BPO services providers who also provide analytics services as a part of their offerings.

Besides, global companies also source analytics services from their captive centres in India.

Among the pure-play analytics vendors, Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic-invested Mu Sigma is said to be the biggest in this space in India. Besides, there are about 15 different companies such as AbsolutData, Fractal Analytics, ZS Associates, LatentView and Opera Solutions who are trying to position themselves in this market.

Among the large BPO services providers, Genpact has a large analytics practice with close to 200 million to 300 million U.S. dollars coming from this business. The company has grown its analytics business organically as well through acquisitions. In the past, Genpact acquired companies such as Symphony Marketing Solutions and EmPower Research which gave a boost to its analytics business.

"Analytics is an exciting opportunity for Indian players and for India. Also, as we spoke with clients and thought leaders in the U.S. and Europe, it became apparent that India has a leadership position and is well-ahead of the curve in marketing analytics," said Anil Kaul, CEO of AbsolutData. Endi

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