SAS India partners with Rajasthan govt to skill officials, students

Mumbai: Data analytics major SAS has rolled out a programme for the Rajasthan government which aims to skill officials and students in data analytics, said a senior company executive.

This is part of the company’s focus on the public sector as a key segment for its India business, said Noshin Kagalwalla, vice president of SAS India.

The first batch of the programme with 20 Rajasthan officials commenced on May 30 and will continue till June 10. The batches for students will commence on July 15.


Regarding training of officials, Kagalwalla, who is also the managing director, said, “The objective is once they go through the training, since they already have the SAS Technologies and Solutions as part of government of Rajasthan, they were able to leverage it more extensively and they would be able to utilise the solutions and technologies for not only extending rapid adoption of what is deployed, but also using a solution and technology thing in your use cases to perform that point.”

The company, which reported $3.2 billion in revenue in 2020-21, earns about 16% of its revenue from software solutions for governments, its second largest vertical.

For SAS India, the government continues to be the fastest-growing vertical, accounting for over 20% of its revenues.

“Whether it be the central government or the various state governments, or even public sector banks, which are majority owned by the government. In all those areas wherever our solution is deployed, training forms an integral component of our deployment,” he said. “Whether it is a public sector bank or state government or central government, it will be able to leverage the SAS technologies and solutions only when they have skilled resources as part of it."

The Rajasthan government has planned an event called the Super100 – an online quiz programme targeting 100,000 students and graduates from across India. The three-day programme, commencing on June 15, will evaluate participants through the quiz based on their knowledge in analytics and data science, which constitutes 40% of the questionnaire, 10% on vocabulary, 30% aptitude and logical reasoning and 20% statistics. The government will fully sponsor the top 100 students who join the course at RCAT.