LatentView Analytics Corporation may not be a big name on the IIM (Indian Institute of Management) campuses, like Tata Consultancy Services or Cognizant Technology Solutions. But the specialist in the emerging area of big data analytics this year hired 30 IIM graduates on its first visit to the premier institutes for campus recruitment.

Malaya Rout, a graduate from IIM Calcutta, on joining LatentView, said that it was exciting to be ‘big’ being part of a small company rather than being ‘small’ as part of a large company.

Similarly, Jyothi Prakash Gandhamanen from IIM Lucknow says that the company being in its growth stage gives a better visibility and provides an opportunity to work with highly talented professionals in analytics.

Students feel it is challenging to work with specialists than get lost in the crowd in big companies, said Venkat Viswanathan, founder and CEO of the seven-year-old LatentView.

The city-based LatentView provides business analytics services to Fortune 500 companies focusing on data analysis and modelling. Big data software analytic tools examine large amounts of data from various sources to understand the hidden patterns and unknown correlations. In India its clients include Pepsi and Microsoft.

In fact, LatentView’s three founders – Venkat Viswanathan, Ramesh Hariharan and Pramad Jandhyala – are all alumni of IIM Calcutta. “Being an IIM alumnus helped us reach out to the students easily,” he said. The company has 250 employees in its Chennai analytics centre and plans to double the number by the year end.

Salary offered to the IIM graduates is Rs 12-15 lakh per year. This is on par with big companies.

Big data analytics is the next big wave in the information technology industry. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2015 this sector will generate 4.4 million jobs.

Smaller companies offer the management graduates greater exposure and hands on experience across domains and technologies in the area of big data analytics, said K. Swaminathan, Founder, Aspire, a Chennai-based company specialising in business intelligence and big data analytics.

S. Hemamalini, Founder & CEO, LiveConnections, a recruitment company, said that youngsters want a job that allows them to learn and wear ‘multi-hats,’ so that they can set up shop on their own. The trend is to gravitate towards any boutique shop that focuses on sunrise sectors like big data analytics. The big brands that command day one status in top campuses are unable to give them this cerebral fix, she said.

>raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in

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