The Higher Education Review

With a view to make a compelling difference to the business world, a group of people who have high academic pedigree and superior industry experience established Praxis Business School in 2007. Started with an academic partnership with XLRI, Jamshedpur as a residential campus in Kolkata, the institute has a small but high-powered faculty team. Within 4 years of its beginning, ICICI Bank endowed its Dean´s Chair to the institute for its potential, which is a rare honour for a school so young. In 2011, Praxis pioneered formal teaching of analytics in the country by launching the one-year postgraduate program in business analytics. This program grew in stature to feature within the top five programs in the country across various ranking lists.

Praxis currently offers the Analytics program from two of its own campuses at Kolkata and Bangalore and as a Knowledge Partner at IIDT, Tirupati. “Today, there is a growing demand for the right talent in the Analytics area,” opines Charanpreet Singh, Co-founder and Professor, Praxis Business School. The Praxis post graduate program in business analytics addresses the needs for analytics professionals.

The institute prepares students who have the required aptitude for analytical problem solving but do not have the knowledge necessary for an analytics or a data science job, for a sustained innings in the data science domain. The program is full-time, nine-months of in-class rigorous training that is targeted at people who are serious about joining the data science workforce to make an effective contribution to the field. The program addresses the three pillars of analytics/data science – techniques in statistics/ mathematics including machine learning, deep learning, statistical modelling, econometrics and visualization; technology including tools like R, Python, SAS, Qlik Sense, Tableau, Hadoop and Spark, business understanding including market research, accounting, financial statement analysis, business communication, domain analytics (web, retail, health, telecom).

Praxis is one of the few institutes that takes the ownership of placements for the students and helps them transition in to analytics domain. “We have the most robust and contemporary curriculum and the most rigorous pedagogy delivered by a team of experts that is very difficult to match. We teach you to think the analytics way and dive deep into the concepts and skills required for success in this field,” remarks Charanpreet. The pedagogy includes classroom lectures, case-studies, handson labs and projects. The full-time program makes students immerse themselves in learning and the exceptional team of practitioners and academicians who collaborate to design and deliver the program give an advantage over other institutes.

At Praxis, students have the advantage of learning from people of great experience and quality. “A look at our curriculum over the last six years reveals that we have changed about 20-25 percent of our content every year, in line with the rapid development of this science. This update with the latest trends has helped us in achieving a placement record of 90 percent plus for every batch since our beginning in 2011,” says Charanpreet. Undoubtedly, the Praxis business analytics programs would help its learners in a positive transition of a career in analytics and data science. Indeed, the institute has been doing it so successfully for the past six years.