Jigsaw Academy Caters the Growing Need of Courses in Analytics
Jigsaw Academy, The Online School of Analytics, is the brainchild of Gaurav Vohra (CEO & Co-Founder) and Sarita Digumarti (COO & Co-Founder), who having worked in various industries and across multiple roles brought their expertise and experience together, to form the company. The company was funded by Manipal Global Education Services in December 2015 with Mr.T.V. Mohandas Pai on the Advisory Board.
Gaurav and Sarita were brought together by their shared passion for data and the belief in the power of analytics to change the way not only industries, but individuals as well, could work. The company was founded in September 2010; and the first batch went live in early May 2011.
Jigsaw Academy has been awarded for its excellence in education by Brands Academy Award 2013 for ‘Best Upcoming Academy for Analytics Courses in Bangalore’. The online school has trained over 40,000 students across 30+ countries in the most widely used industry-relevant data analytics tools and techniques. Over 200 corporate clients and 5000 corporate participants so far have been trained by Jigsaw Academy and the online school has launched over 40 courses in analytics and Big Data technologies. As pioneers in hands-on training, the online school uses a blend of concepts and real life business case studies in an online platform.
In the last five years, Jigsaw Academy has seen phenomenal growth as a company, expanding from 8 employees to 150.
The analytics & Big Data sector has seen consistent growth in the last five years despite an increasingly uncertain global outlook. The advanced analytics market is expected to grow at a consistent CAGR of 33.2% and Big Data at a CAGR of 26.4%, almost six to eight times that of the overall IT markets.
Companies today are looking for employees who have both technical skills as well as the business acumen to succeed in their roles, and the days of single skill roles and careers are long gone. This means you don’t just need an engineering degree or an MBA, you also need to additional business knowledge and the ability to help business take faster, smarter decisions. A lot of these decisions are on the basis of data, which is why analytics training is required not just for resources in analytics delivery teams, but also across middle to senior level professionals.
The main reason to start Jigsaw Academy was the need to bridge the gap between the demand and supply for qualified, industry-ready analytics professionals. Jigsaw focuses on training using a case study based approach involving real life oriented tools, problems, and data.
Industry Relevance with in-demand courses:
The co-founders of Jigsaw Academy think in the last 12 months, more clarity has started to emerge around the different roles analytics professionals are expected to play within an organization. Organizations have smartened up on how they are hiring analytics resources, with emphasis now being placed on specific analytics skills. Generalists are giving way to specialists in the field of analytics.
Jigsaw Academy has the largest suite of offerings in this space. Jigsaw offers specializations (Learning Paths as they are referred to on their website) which are well thought-out combination of courses in analytics that are aligned to the different roles that have emerged in the analytics industry.
From data science to machine learning to data visualization to business analysis, Jigsaw offers various courses for all these roles, which include domain specializations as well as tool-wise specializations in analytics and Big Data. While there are many online training providers that offer several of these courses, no one has the depth and breadth of offerings in the analytics and Big Data training space that Jigsaw Academy has.
Future plans and marketing plans:
The company’s future plan is to continue to focus on generating content and training material related to data mining and analytics across multiple tools, technologies and domains, and ensure focus on real life application of analytics and the quality of content. The company wants to build a comprehensive repository of analytics training content with contributions from industry experts from around the world.
The company also is planning academic partnerships with universities to offer unique analytics courses.
Challenges faced in the analytics training industry:
One of the challenges the online school has faced in analytics training throughout is getting access to the right kinds of instructors. People with a high degree of subject matter expertise are often not the best teachers, and people who teach well may not have the required business expertise. Also there still exists a lack of clarity regarding the different roles available in the jobs market and what are the skills required for them – and this confusion has also petered down to the training and education industry. Which is why the need of the hour are domain experts who understand what are the exact training requirements and how to best fulfill them.
Co-Founders profile:
Gaurav Vohra (CEO & co-founder, Jigsaw Academy) - has over a decade of experience in the field of analytics and has worked across multiple industry verticals including financial services, retail, FMCG, telecom, pharmaceuticals and leisure. He was recognized as one of India's top analytics academicians in 2014. Gaurav is a graduate of IIM Bangalore.
Sarita Digumarti (COO & co-founder, Jigsaw Academy) - has over 11 years of extensive analytics and consulting experience across the FMCG, retail and healthcare sectors. She has worked in both India and the US, tackling complex business analytics and intelligence problems. She has an M.A in Quantitative Economics, from Tufts University, Boston, and an MBA from T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal.
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