Working in the procurement sector Anurag Vyas understood the importance of data analytics to process and accumulate insights from raw data. Wanting to hone all the technical data science skills and formally learn data science, machine learning and AI, Anurag Vyas enrolled for the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI) program at Accredian.
In this interview, let’s see what interests him about data science the most 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?
Anurag: I am part of the Global Certificate in Data Science & AI (GCDAI) program, March 2020 batch. I am currently working at LevaData as Senior Business Analyst. The company helps global enterprises in the supply chain or procurement sector by leveraging their data and identifies opportunities to reduce costs through strategies and solutions. My responsibilities in the organization include product roadmap design and also defining a standard developing model which can read customer data.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Data Science & Machine Learning?
Anurag: I am a computer science graduate and completed my post graduation in Logistics, Materials and Supply Chain Management from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering. And I want to link these two as this combination of degrees has led me to work as a supply chain consultant.
I started my career with Infosys wherein I was a SAP material management consultant. The core expertise which I developed there was the Master Data Management process across 4 SAP systems in different geographies enabling data consistency. The process identified all customer data and migrated them to the core SAP application.
After that I moved to Ramco Systems, a CNA-based organization. My core role was of a supply chain consultant. They had their own RP Suite and we were just applying that. I was involved in all end-to-end activities, from requirement gathering to data collection and data migration to the software. And because I have a background in computer science, I have an excellent understanding of how the IT systems work and enabled me even to understand the software much faster than any one else in melanization.
And, currently, as stated earlier as well, I am working in LevaData. The way data is collected and processed here using ML and AI models to gather insights, made me curious. I thought this is something that I should build my expertise in so that I, too, can incorporate it in my career. And it is not a one time job. Data insights are required by all businesses and customers. That’s what got me interested to learn data science at Accredian.
Although I started my data science journey with the GCD program at Accredian, I later upgraded it to GCDAI to have more knowledge on AI as I am already working with my company on clustering algorithms to understand customer data patterns and get insights on them.
Question 3: What all tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered in your Data Science & AI program at Accredian so far?
Anurag: Accredian is such a school that offers everything to help any professional learn data science. It has taught all the tools and packages excellently with in-depth information on each of them. And I have mastered Jupyter notebook, EDA and Python coding, right from writing basic syntaxes to high-level machine learning algorithms. I have also learned some of the major Python libraries like NumPy, Scikit-Learn, Seaborn, etc. which is very useful while doing EDA.
Question 4: What are some initial challenges when you got started on your Data Science journey, and how did you overcome them?
Anurag: One of the biggest challenges was my own lack of confidence. It may be because whenever I sat to learn data science or attend any of its classes, I was too overwhelmed by the multiple subjects it covered. Even though I was very good at coding during my computer science days, it’s been eight years since I left it and I didn’t know where to start.
But the structured curriculum and the faculties at Accredian helped to keep me calm, learn data science, AI and ML and practice. They offer real world examples of data science applications and the way we are provided projects at the end of every module helped me build my confidence. Now, I am not afraid of any code and take it as an opportunity to learn.
Question 5: Who is your favorite faculty at Accredian, and what did you learn from him the Most?
Anurag: My favorite faculty is Deepesh. He teaches us machine learning. He has a unique teaching style and explains all concepts to the very core.
Question 6: What is the goal of Data Science?
Anurag: I’ll take this question as my goal of data science. My one goal to learn data science is to not just satisfying my curiosity towards the subject but also build my career into it. Now I have my specific plans laid out, like my two-year plan. One year, which already passed because I started as a data analyst in my organization, which is where I’ve already started working on some of the data science projects.
And then the five-year goal begins since I’m already into the product management team. And I’ve honed my skills as a business analyst and a product manager. So I believe if I can work in an organization where these two match where I can build a product that gives useful insights into the data science domain. This is something which I am looking forward to, and I still firmly believe that I’m going in the right direction.
Question 7: In your view, how has Data Science evolved in the last few years?
Anurag: Data Science has evolved and grown in leaps and bounds in the last few years. And this has happened because there’s much more data available now that businesses across industries can use. Furthermore, earlier there were no tools to read those data, but right now we have a plethora of tools, applications and concepts using which we can easily analyze data and get insights from it.
In the past years, the knowledge and awareness of data science has also spread far and wide. Right now, everyone knows about data science. If you search on Google you will get a million courses on data science. There are also so many tutorials or explanatory videos available on Youtube. Data science is therefore strongly making its presence felt throughout the world right now.
Question 8: What are the current trends in Data Science that you are most excited about?
Anurag: The most recent trend that I can talk about in data science is Artificial Intelligence. It is even one of the predominant reasons why I upgraded my course from GCD to GCDAI at Accredian so that I not only learn data science but also everything about AI.
AI has evolved a lot and has immense potential. It is already being used heavily in the manufacturing domain to predict risks, get insights on inventory, shutdowns, inventory stabilization, etc. and I am really excited about it.
Question 9: Which are some of the blogs that you follow?
Anurag: I don’t follow blogs as such, but I do a lot of networking on LinkedIn. So, I follow the Accredian hashtag on LinkedIn and read every Accredian post. I have also joined many data science forums from where I can get the latest news and trends on the same and keep my eyes on Kaggle for any new datasets and try to work on them.
Question 10: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Data Science?
Anurag: If you are someone who loves math and data even though you don’t know how to code, don’t worry, data science is for you. I left coding 8 years back and yet I have completed my data science course at Accredian without a hassle. Just consider data science as a concept and don’t associate it to programming. It is only a concept that will fascinate you if you love working with data and soon enough you will love gathering insights to help organizations work. So, you can learn data science too and start whenever you want to upskill.
This was a conversation with one of our GCDAI students – Anurag Vyas.
If you want to read more student interviews, check out Accredian Spotlight.
