NAME: VIKRANT YADAV

INSTITUTE: IIT KANPUR

ROLL NO: 18817863
 Problem Statement 🙇
Let us assume that the global economy (as of 2022) is moving toward a state of depression. This might end up
slowing the Indian economy too. Various sectors/industries could have different degrees of impact.
You have the resources to develop a product for users/industry of your choice to increase user demand.

🤔
To start with, I would like to find out if the world is moving toward Global Recession. If yes, then

how long can the recovery take?

“Recent consensus forecasts suggest that the global economy will experience its steepest decline in growth over
the next two years following an initial rebound from global recession since 1970." (Source - World Bank)

As it turns out, the world is very likely moving towards a state of depression for the upcoming two years and is
likely to start recovering from 3rd year onwards.

Now let’s ponder a bit on the causes of the worldwide economic slowdown. 🤓
There are two primary causes:

A. Covid-19 Pandemic B. Russia-Ukraine War (Source - IMF blog, Jul 2022)

“ Risks from new variants of the virus, and the Russia-Ukraine war have emerged as the dampeners to the global
growth outlook.”

“Fresh sanctions on Russia pose new risks accentuating supply disruptions in global value chains, and
commodity price spirals hitting glass ceilings.” (Source - RBI Report, Apr 2022)

Has the Global Economic Slowdown impacted the Indian Economy? 🧐

The share of covid-19 cases in USA and India as a
percentage of total worldwide cases

India Ranked Second, following the USA, with

4.42 crore cases by April 2022 (Source:
WHO)

“The perturbations from repeated waves of the COVID-19 pandemic have come in the way of sustained growth
recovery in India.”

“ Sanctions on Russia will lead to a rise in commodity price. As price pressures become more generalized
globally, the risk to growth might aggravate in India.” (Source - RBI Report, Apr 2022)

The pandemic has caused a deep dent in livelihoods. It has scarred minds, production capacities, and
confidence with far-reaching economic and social costs, and the post-pandemic new normal may be very
different from the pre-pandemic situation. Global Economic Slowdown is impacting the Indian Economy.
1. Key data points needed to determine the industry 📈
● Which industry has the most growth potential and resilience for the economic slowdown?

● Which industries are most impacted by the economic slowdown?

In India, the private corporate sector showed resilience as firms adopted new modes of operations and
aligned their business strategies to the new environment.

Most affected industries (first table) and Almost unaffected industries (second table):

Hotel and Restaurants (Hospitality) Air transport services

Transport logistics services Offline education.

ITeS (IT Enabled Services) Computer Software Health Services

Online Marketplaces Communication Equipment Drugs and pharmaceuticals

Most affected industries are contact-intensive and hence were affected the most by the pandemic.

Cleary ITeS, (Information Technology Enabled Services), Computer Software, and Online Marketplaces
performed the best, followed by Health Services, Communication Equipment, and Pharma.

● How many people in India use the internet, and who are they?

As of today, in 2022, there are around 700 million internet users in India, and the number is expected to reach
900 million by 2025; a growth of 28.5% is expected within 3 years!

(Source - Internet and Mobile

Association of India)

Slightly more than half of the total internet users belong to rural areas. More importantly, growth has plateaued
in urban areas, whereas in rural areas, penetration growth is still high.

2. Target industry and why this one 🎯

“The shape of the recovery post-pandemic would be guided by the realization of reform dividends as also the
contributions from new emerging areas such as healthcare, and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS),
which could drive future growth with adaptations to the pandemic.” (Source - RBI Report, Apr 2022)

Based on the data points explored above, and reports from World Bank, IMF, and RBI, I would narrow down my
focus to ITeS for creating the product as it shows the most growth potential and resilience to global
disturbances.

Let’s see how Indians use different ITeS.

We can see that ITeS has broad

usage areas, many of which
themselves are billion-dollar
industries.

But one thing is shared amongst

all, Data.

(Source - Internet and Mobile

Association of India)
 Some data about data

● In 2021, people created 2.5 exabytes (18 zeroes after 2.5!) of data daily. 1 Terabyte (TB) = 1024 GB
● By 2022, 70% of the globe’s GDP will have undergone digitization.
● By 2025, 200+ zettabytes of data will be in cloud storage globally 1 Petabyte (PB) = 1024 TB
● Machine-generated data accounted for over 45% of internet data in 2021.
1 Exabyte (EB) = 1024 PB
● By 2023, there are expected to be around 1.3 billion IoT subscriptions,
which are the biggest source of data. 1 Zettabyte (ZB) = 1024 EB

When government-mandated lockdowns went into effect, consumers changed their habits in mass, turning to
streaming services, online shopping, telehealth, and contactless mobile payments. This spurred unprecedented
growth in data-generating services.

Changes in consumer habits during the pandemic accelerated a trend that had already been in place for years:
big data is now mission-critical to more and more businesses, not just the tech giants. From the machine
learning algorithms that triage posts in Facebook newsfeeds to geo-targeted ads from local businesses, most
B2B and B2C software applications rely on data to personalize the user experience.

These industries are creating data at such a high volume and velocity that they have more data than they can
process. So for my analysis, I would create a product for the data industry.

3. So, what exactly is the problem, and how big is it? 🧐

Problem:

There exists a substantial data professionals shortage, and a solution is needed to fix it.

Understanding the size of the problem:

Right now, there are 2.7 million unfulfilled data job vacancies globally, and the number is expected to shoot up
to 11.5 million by 2026. (Source: Economic Times)

On the other hand, only 3% of 15 lakh ( = 45,000) technical graduates in India get relevant tech jobs. In India, 1
lakh+ Data Jobs are listed on Linkedin only, with salary distribution mentioned below.

(Source: InterviewBit)
Size of the problem: There is a gold rush for Data Jobs, and India is almost the ground zero. India accounts for
1 in 10 data job openings, making India the second largest Data Jobs hub after the US.

Right now, there are 2.7 Lakh (10% of 2.7 million) data jobs in India, and the number will shoot up to at least
11.5 lakh by 2026. (Source: QUARTZ INDIA)

And job possibilities for Indians are not limited to the Indian geography. There are overseas and international
remote job opportunities, too.

4. Top 3 issues that have caused such a huge shortage: 🥇🥈🥉

I. autoML and DataRobots have increased the bar to entry:

With the mainstreaming of automated machine learning (autoML) and DataRobot, an AI platform that can
train and tune machine learning models, businesses don’t necessarily need full-fledged data scientists
who can perform end-to-end data processing, from exploratory data analysis to building ETL pipelines—at
least not for junior roles.

Thus companies are moving up the skill level chain because they can now get much of what they need for
data science from DataRobot and autoML. And there are not enough people with the required skill set to
do specialized tasks like building custom data pipelines, creating and maintaining databases, and owning
the overall data management strategy.

II. What universities teach is not enough. They are lagging in the catch-up game:

Skillset requirements in the industry change at a much faster rate than universities can respond.
It sometimes takes a few years to create and get a single course approved. While universities are trying to
reduce the time it takes to launch a relevant course, they are lagging in catching up with the industry.

III. Then why don’t companies train their employees themselves?

First, an organization that is short on practical model deployment skills will not have the expertise
necessary to train an incoming group of employees. After all, they can’t teach what they don’t know.

Second, training can be time-consuming, drain resources, and undermine organizational efforts to become
faster and more efficient.

This is not sustainable or feasible for most companies, particularly smaller organizations that may not
have the means to train their employees properly.

There is a clear need for a solution outside the purview of universities and companies.
5. Target audience 🎯
So, the idea is to create a product to fix the data professionals shortage. Consequently, there are 2 stakeholders:
Data Job Seekers and companies needing data professionals.

College students seeking data jobs and internships: In India, tier-1 and top tier-2 college students have fair
access to data jobs and internships. It is not because these students are equipped with the required skill set, but
in the existing system, companies have the best bet on investing their resources in training these students.

But the percentage of students studying courses relevant to the data field in these top colleges is less than 1%
( = 15, 000 out of 15,00,000) of tech graduates in India. (Source: Statista.com)

Professionals with 1-2 years of experience looking to enter the Data field and Data professionals
looking for better opportunities:

In this category, a minority of people from top colleges may enjoy the momentum they got right from their
college. But the majority are on their own. They, along with college students, need a product that will take them
through the process of getting a data job by guiding them at every step.
6. Product as a solution 💡
This flowchart helps to understand the flow of the product

Relevant courses/boot camps/projects may or may not exist already. For this, we will collaborate with industry
experts to create high-quality relevant content which will take our product a step ahead of universities and
already available MOOCs and boot camps.

The goal of the recommendation system of the product will be to recommend Courses/boot camps/projects
suited for upskilling based on user profile. It will work on the following criterion:

1. Educational Background 2. Existing skills compatibility 3. User goals

After following the roadmap user will submit the certifications of completed courses/boot camps/projects.
This will help the user create a portfolio. Based on the portfolio and basic skill assessment tests, the matching
system of the product will match users to a pool that will target certain companies.

This information will be shared with reputed tech interview organizations which do the preliminary screening
interviews and then share back a list of good quality shortlisted candidates, which will eventually be passed to
the client companies of the product.
7. How will the product create value at different parts of the value chain? 💰💸🤑
● For users (job seekers): The product provides end-to-end support to the users for getting a data job which
otherwise they may not get.

● Client companies will have the following benefits:

1. Get candidates who are fit for the role 2. Reduced interview cost 3. Shorter hiring time

● The interview firms to whole preliminary interview rounds were outsourced: They will get more business
as they will be getting more skilled people to interview, which they may not have gotten because of the
initial skill gap and lack of people seriously pursuing data career.

● Indian Economy: In the end, the benefits will also transfer to the Indian economy in terms of more
employment, growth, and increased tax collection, with will further promote more business and growth.

8. Key challenges that the product may encounter ⚡⚡⚡

● Getting industry experts to create high-quality educational content:

For this right, compensation and incentives will have to be provided to the industry experts.

● Tapping the rural population’s potential:

As shown on the fourth page, OTT platforms have a penetration of 88% in the rural population, but online
learning only has a penetration of 7%. This is simply because watching a tv show is much easier than
studying Data Science.

Also, to start with, not all age groups will be interested in learning data science. We can assume only the
18-25 yrs age group will be interested, which accounts for almost 25% of the Indian rural population. Clearly,
there is a scope for more penetration of online learning in rural areas.

To boost penetration, more user-friendly products present in more vernacular languages will be made.
Also can direct rural users toward improving their English language proficiency which will help them to
understand the content as well as help them ace the job interviews.

The product can be offered based on the “pay when you get the job” model at a reduced price and EMI
options to lower the economic barrier.

● Reducing the user drop-off: Gamification and detailed data tracking can be used to reduce user drop-off at
different points of the user journey.
9. Future of the product within 3 years: 🪄🧙
● Collab with colleges: With time, we will have a lot of data about what companies in data industries
do and what their requirements are. Also, we will have user data to know what skills are easy to
get and difficult to get. Based on this data, we can collaborate with colleges to incorporate our
courses into their curriculum to help more students from their college get jobs.

Colleges, especially tier 2-3 private colleges, will be willing to accept the collaboration as they
need to increase their placement numbers. This, in turn, will help get us more users and help them
get data jobs

● Collab with companies: Again, with a lot of data at hand, we can provide add an insight generation
functionality in the product that helps companies to better adapt to the Data job market in terms
of what tech stack their competitors are using, what tech stack they may need in future based on
the trends and company requirements, etc.

● Expansion to more customer segments: After making a stronghold in the mentioned customer
segments, we can also expand to 11th-12th student segment to help them learn basics of Data
Science so that when they reach college, they in a position to learn advanced technologies and get
a better chance at securing data interns and data job.

● Expanding to the segments of the tech industry: After making a stronghold in the Data segment,
we can expand to other tech jobs like software and product management, making our product a
one-stop solution for all kinds of tech jobs

THANK YOU FOR BEARING WITH ME FOR THIS LONG 😄!