In this Accredian Spotlight interview, we feature Manish Gupta, a leading Banking Professional with over 9 years of experience in the BFSI sector. His insatiable passion for knowledge and upskilling led him to enroll in the Post Graduate Program in Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Accredian.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you a part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Manish: I’m from PGP DS & AI 2020 cohort. I have a total of 9 years experience in retail banking and I’ve recently upgraded to the position of Branch Manager. Currently, I am on a career break and pursuing my career interest in the field of Data Science.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Manish: Post completing my MBA, I started working in Retail banking wherein my responsibilities were centered around banking operations, new business acquisition, cross-selling & upselling, relationship management, portfolio management, customer service, loan approvals, transaction monitoring, and regulatory compliance.
I have been working with Data for the purpose of business acquisition and revenue growth but it has been more of a manual process. So I came across Data Science and got interested in learning to leverage the power of Data science and machine learning and use data in a more structured way for solving business problems.
Question 3: What tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered at Accredian so far?
Manish: I have implemented Python libraries Pandas, Numpy, Matlplotlib, Seaborn, Sklearn in my projects and have thoroughly enjoyed all the concepts and skills. I am eagerly looking forward to learning Deep Learning (neural networks) libraries like Tensorflow, Keras, etc.
Question 4: What challenges did you face when you started your Data Science journey and how did you overcome it?
Manish: The only challenge I faced in my learning journey was Programming since I had no prior experience but as I started learning, the starter kit, live classes, and assignments helped a lot.
Question 5: Who is your favorite faculty at Accredian and what did you learn from them?
Manish: All the faculty members at Accredian are excellent. I have attended sessions by Deepesh Wadhwani, Subhodeep Dey, and Amit Goyal. All have different styles of teaching and are experts in the Data Science domain.
I really admire Deepesh Wadhwani’s teaching style. The way he translates complex Data Science concepts into simple understandable language with a lot of examples helps a lot.
Question 6: What is the goal of Data Science?
Manish: The goal of Data Science is to solve business problems in a fast and efficient manner enabling business growth in terms of revenue and economic growth, social growth in terms of impact through its powerful solutions, and ecological impact by solving climate change and environmental problems.
Data science can speed up a lot of slow and manual processes across all areas and domains while enabling us in saving costs and providing cutting-edge solutions.
Question 7: What current trends in Data Science are you most excited about?
Manish: I am most excited about powerful Automated AI solutions, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision.
Question 8: Which Data Science blogs do you follow?
Manish: I follow KD Nuggets, Analytics Vidhya, and Towards Data Science. I believe reading and exploring blogs is one of the most important parts of learning Data Science concepts.
Question 9: What advice would you give to a beginner in Data Science?
Manish: I’d advise a beginner to improve Programming, Statistics, Mathematics (linear algebra, probability, calculus), Domain knowledge, Communication, skills Team Management, and Cross-Functional collaboration skills for any Data Science role/project to succeed.
Networking on LinkedIn, reading blogs, following Accredian YouTube lectures series by Data Science experts, doing hands-on projects, and building a GitHub portfolio is extremely essential to start your journey.
Hope you enjoyed reading this interview. If you want to read more such interesting student stories, check out Accredian Spotlight.
