Data scientist, the coolest job in the market

Myntra's data science team gives insights on each click a user performs to understand the behaviour of the customers and deliver targeted offers

“We generate two petabytes of data,” — that is the pitch ad technology company Vserv gives to potential data scientists which it plans to hire.

The data it generates will only grow, as it harvests user-behaviour of 500 million smartphone users in India and Southeast Asia and delivers advertisements for their customers to these users.

“Data science guys pick up signals of interest in user data, build models and offer solutions,” says Dippak Khurana, chief executive and co-founder of Vserv. “Data scientist is the coolest jobs in the market now.”

But getting scientists who understand the dynamic data that users generate from accessing internet on their smartphones, analyse and offer insights that help companies to offer products, services and advertisements to targeted users is still a challenge.

“The learning curve is still young in the country,” says Khurana. Vserv has a team of 15 scientists who crunch numbers that help publishers and advertisers reach out to the target customers through their smartphones.

There are several service providers, including traditional IT services firms and specialised analytics firms such as MuSigma and Manthan, which help customers analyse data of their business.

A few large companies such as Myntra have their own teams, as they guard the data they generate for their business goals. “The data team is our secret sauce,” said Prasad Kompalli, head of e-commerce platform at Myntra Designs.

Myntra, the app-only fashion store owned by e-commerce company Flipkart, has a user base of 12 million who spend an average of Rs z1,800 each time to buy clothes and accessories on the platform. The opportunity only grows as there is an increase in firms exploiting data for their business. As the world increasingly goes digital and people use smartphones to read content, capture images and videos and share it on social media, book cabs and buy groceries either on their apps or on mobile leaves a digital footprint.

The footprint is harvested by firms such as Facebook and Google to offer insights in real time for organisations to tap them to either sell a service or a product.

The data science team at Myntra gives insights on each click a user performs to understand the behaviour of the customers and deliver targeted offers to increase sales.

MuSigma, an ad technology firm, which has emerged as the largest player outside Google and Facebook ecosystems, has built the teams over the last few years. “Our success depends on the insights the team provides,” said Piyush Shah, chief product officer at InMobi.