Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
The Economist published a report in 2017 titled: The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. In today's digitally transformed and connected world, data is produced in vast streams daily, at a mind-boggling volume and pace. Be it the use of data by Cambridge Analytica in the Trump campaign or be it the personalized recommendations that your YouTube gives you, data is used extensively by companies to make decisions of any and every sort. Understanding this dire need of Business Analytics professionals, three of the best institutes of our country (ISI Kolkata, IIM Calcutta, and IIT Kharagpur) joined hands in 2015 to start a course called PGDBA which stands for Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics. The subjects taught in the course take very well care of the three pillars of business analytics – stats, computing, and the business, and help you take the next steps in the vast world of analytics.
The course is designed wonderfully. During the pre-semester in IIM Calcutta, you get introduced to some of the important management subjects including Finance, Marketing, Operations, etc. as well as to the application and scope of Analytics. The first semester in ISI introduces you to the stats heavy subjects ranging from Statistical Structures in Data and Inference to coding intensive subjects like Computation in Data Science and DBMS. The second semester in IIT Kharagpur introduces you to subjects like Linear Algebra, Time Series, Machine Learning, Supply Chain Analytics, etc. as well as hands-on experience in the labs which helps you gain the knowledge to solve the data aspect of the business problems. The business aspect is what is being taught in the third semester in IIM Calcutta through subjects like Computational Finance, Marketing Management, Project Management, etc. as well as through the analytics specific subjects like Predictive Modelling, Categorical Data Analysis, etc.
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In this blog post, I will discuss what makes PGDBA different from other management courses in India. I will also discuss the similarities and differences in the exam pattern of the PGDBA exam in comparison to CAT. Let's first deep dive into the exam patterns for both these exams.
Now that we know the similarities and the differences between both the exams, let us now talk about the other important aspect- how PGDBA is different from any other general management course. First and foremost, PGDBA IS NOT MBA. A lot of people have this misconception that this course is equivalent to a general management course. No, it is definitely not. You learn hardcore statistics, machine learning techniques and their contemporary business applications in this course, which you do not learn as a part of a general management course. The two courses also have a very clear distinction in terms of the number of students and diversity, course content, academic rigor, internship duration and job opportunities after your course completion.
With the increase in computing power, the data is being produced at a whopping rate. To give you a perspective, every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is being generated. Oh, by the way a quintillion is 10^18. Let's wait for a second and digest this fact. 25*10^17 bytes of data are being generated EVERY SINGLE DAY! Every minute 46,740 images are uploaded on Instagram; 41,46,600 videos are viewed on YouTube every single minute. This enormous production of data provides companies with the huge opportunity to make data-driven decisions. Large investments are being made in data analytics to make better business decisions from the past data. This past data is being generated by different sources such as business-people, marketing, education, engineering, medicine, social media, on-line transactions, call centres, sensors, web logs and telecommunications.
Understanding this need, I believe this is an exciting time to enter this field. So, for anyone who is looking to do a business analytics course in India, I think PGDBA is a good option to consider. The course curriculum is designed in a way to help you boost your career not only in data sciences but can also help you become a liaison between technology and business teams. This is the need of the hour and companies do realise this – which is the main reason this course has gotten such traction in such a brief time.
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