Maneesh Bajaj is an entrepreneur steering his business for over 11 years in the healthcare industry and has been in the sector for 25 years. And, as COVID 19 locked us up in our houses, he thought of spending his time not cooking or gardening but learning data science. That’s the simple reason why he enrolled for the Global Certificate in Data Science (GCD) program at Accredian.
In this interview, let’s take a look at what interested him in data science and how his learning experience has been at Accredian.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Maneesh: I am a GCD student, May 2020 Cohort at Accredian. I am heading Bajaj Medtronics Pvt Ltd, a healthcare firm having an industry experience of 25 years. We are dealing in the sale of medical diagnostic equipment and reagents, disposables, surgical items, COVID protective gears, OT equipment and hospital supplies.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Maneesh: I started my career as a system analyst for Xerox Corporation Ltd, where I was involved in the coding, testing, and debugging for the first three printers launched in the international market by Xerox Corporation, USA; completed Y2K date conversion project for Xerox Corporation, Canada where our team rectified 3.3 million lines of code in a record time of 9 months. After completing my marketing MBA, I worked for various pharmaceutical companies like Dr. Morepen, BD, bioMerieux, and Transasia.
I have industry experience of 25 years, primarily in the healthcare sector, where we supply equipment and consumables to hospitals. During the lockdown, I put on my learning hat again as I had time at my disposal from my hectic schedule. My love for Python programming language pushed me towards learning data science and taking it up as a career option as predictions will be in maximum demand in the Post-COVID era. I also wanted to learn the skills in data science and AI taught at Accredian, and increase my firm’s productivity.
Question 3: What tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered in your Data Science & AI program at Accredian so far?
Maneesh: The tools and packages I have mastered while learning data science at Accredian are Python along with its multiple packages like Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Sklearn. I have also learned about ML Models like Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, and Random Forest Algorithms.
Question 4: What are some initial challenges when you got started on your Data Science journey, and how did you overcome them?
Maneesh: At the beginning of learning data science, I used to get overwhelmed while coding in Python for a specific program. But Accredian’s excellent curriculum and teaching methodology along with the development of my own business logic helped me overcome this challenge.
I could utilize my domain expertise in healthcare to arrive at the necessary solutions to the problem statement, which was given to me. Moreover, after going through the case studies used in my training at Accredian and the projects I completed as a part of my GCD Certification course, my self-confidence increased manifold. I could now clearly understand my stakeholder’s problem statement and come up with useful actionable insights.
Question 5: Who is your favorite faculty at Accredian, and what did you learn from him the Most?
Maneesh: The teachers at Accredian are all very experienced and know their subject and its applications very well. However, I found Suchit Majumdar to be really resourceful. He helped me clearly understand concepts and their applications.
My primary learning from him is that we have to be really involved and approach any problem with the right perspective to derive the full benefit of the knowledge imparted to us here. He also made us understand that in the data science industry the final answer to any question lies within the customer for whom any data science application or project is developed.
Question 6: What is the goal of Data Science?
Maneesh: The field of data science has evolved manifold in the past few years. The same is with any other area; it is the era of super specialization. Gone are the days when the human resource was scarce; a few hands were expected to perform all the tasks in a project life cycle, right from gathering the data for a business problem to arriving at the final solution to be presented to the customer.
With the development of new data visualization tools like Tableau and Power BI, it has become much easier to present data analysis’ findings to the end-user using drag and drop features of the data science tools while writing minimum amount of code.
Cloud computing has made a data scientist’s task more manageable, minimizing his dependence on hardware and the robust infrastructure needed for competing in any data science project. Various data science competitions at Kaggle and different hackathons give the amateur and budding data scientists ample opportunities to learn new technologies and advance in their data science journey much faster than earlier times.
With the recent advances in machine learning and AI, the machine learning models are doing a significant chunk of work after relevant data has been made available to them for training and arriving at conclusive business decisions.
Question 7: Which are some of the blogs that you follow?
Maneesh: My favorite blogs in data science are Towards Data Science, Medium, and Machine Learning Mastery.
Question 8: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Data Science?
Maneesh: My sincere advice to budding data scientists is to learn; we need to start learning data science basics along with that of Statistics, Python, and popular data visualization tools like Tableau or Power BI. The more you get your hands dirty in doing data science projects and participate in various data science competitions, the faster will be your learning curve in this industry.
Finally, keep your eyes and ears open regarding the latest trends and developments in the data science industry. Focus on developing your business logic, and don’t get overwhelmed by coding, as that is just the tip of the iceberg.
This was a conversation with one of our GCD students – Maneesh Bajaj.
If you want to read more such inspiring stories, go to Accredian Spotlight.
